People of Chitral reject fake bridge plan

The residents of Chitral town, rather the whole district, who are end users of the Chitral bazaar bypass road, have out-rightly rejected the new plan by the C&W department to construct an unnecessary bridge at the same place in addition to the already existing 36 ft wide bridge on the bypass road over the Chitral gole.

Although a commendable and solid step has been taken by the provincial government in initiating the construction of the long overdue Chitral Bazar bypass road, but its functionaries, due to greed and unscrupulousness are out to sabotage the plan by incorporating everything that can be wrong, in its design and execution.

A glaring example is the ‘new’ plan to build an additional bridge on the Chitral gole, where already an excellently built bridge exists which can accommodate three trucks side by side and has raised footpaths on both sides and more importantly, the by-pass road is already aligned and meeting this bridge.

The new brain wave of the executing authorities to spend five crore rupees on constructing another bridge just few meters upstream of the existing bridge creating a huge ugly gorge in between the two bridges, speaks of absolute lack of accountability and the department’s desperation to gobble public money, as commissions and kick backs in a bridge are to the tune of 70 percent of the cost,

Besides unnecessary wastage of money, the bridge would pose security threat to the existing bridge also, as during floods, huge logs and boulders are entangled in the pillars of the bridge and hold up the floodwater to threaten the downstream area. In such an eventuality (God forbid), when the flow breaks out and having two bridges at such close distance would spell disaster. Even a blind and dumb man would scoff at the idea of imposing a bridge upon a bridge for the heck of it!

Bye pass road users are of the opinion that the five crore rupees ill intended to be spent on an unnecessary and potentially dangerous bridge should instead be spent to widen the bypass road and give it modern facilities like underground electric wiring etc, which are so far not part of the bypass project.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=1287

Posted by Sonia Bashir on Oct 25 2011. Filed under National. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry