No action has been taken against those found responsible for the collapse of the Shershah Bridge last year despite the fact that an inquiry commission constituted by the PMIC to investigate the tragic incident has completed its report and its recommendations have been given to the government in March, The News has learnt.
A portion of Shershah Paracha Chowk Bridge along the Northern Bypass collapsed on September 1, 2007, killing at least six people and causing a monetary loss worth millions of rupees to the national exchequer.
The recommendations of the inquiry report, which was obtained by The News, include the lodging of criminal cases against three named officials and the cancellation of the licence of a consultancy firm. These recommendations not only await execution, but remain ignored, it is learnt.
In fact, the firm found guilty of negligence was recently awarded the consultancy contract for Zero Point Interchange in Islamabad – a two billion rupee project – and one of the NHA officials found guilty has been posted in the Capital Development Authority (CDA) in Islamabad.
The land factor
An attempt to protect land belonging to Paracha Textile Mills by the former National Highway Authority (NHA) Chairman Major General (retd) Farrukh Javed and two other senior NHA officials led to flaws in the designing of the fateful Shershah Bridge and its ultimate collapse within months of inauguration.
The inquiry committee found that the land on which the bridge was constructed remained with Paracha Textile Mills even though under the Land Acquisition Act the property should have been transferred to the NHA.
“It was the land of Paracha Textile Mills for whose protection, ECIL got prepared a faulty design and NHA insisted on construction of the bridge on small piece of land although a lot more land was required for construction of a safe bridge” the inquiry committee mentioned in the report.
Even when the bridge was being constructed, the owners of Paracha Textile Mills, who prepare Meezan Ghee in the said factory, erected silos for maximum utilization of their land, which had to be sold to the NHA.
Most interestingly, the land on which Shershah Paracha Chowk was constructed remained the property of the Paracha Textile Mills till the time of the bridge collapse. Only after the tragedy was it acquired by the NHA for over Rs55 million so that the bridge could be reconstructed, the committee learnt.
Given that the NHA chairman visited the bridge twice and even visited Paracha Textile Mills but still took no interest in acquiring the required land from the owner for the construction of the bridge, the committee suspected that he and the two other NHA officials accepted a pay-off from the mills.
The consultants
According to the contents of the inquiry committee report, the bridge’s design was flawed and the consultant of the bridge, an employee of Engineering Consultant International Limited (ECIL), had had the bridge covertly designed from Dubai, but presented it as her own.
The report alleges that the ECIL consultant had no previous experience of designing curved bridges and therefore she had the bridge designed from Dubai but submitted the design as her own.
The ECIL consultant told the inquiry committee that she had not designed any curved bridge previously, and hence got the Shershah Bridge designed from a consultancy firm based in Dubai, through one Mr Adnan.
The inquiry report also reveals that, soon after construction, the portion of the bridge that was to later collapse began tilting to one side. As a result, an independent consultant, Muhammad Iqbal-ul-Haq, raised objections against the design at a very early stage. However, neither the NHA nor ECIL paid heed to his objections.
Soon after realizing the inherent fault in the design, ECIL hired a Greek consultant engineer from Cyprus, Andros Achillos, and paid him US$100,000 for the ‘removal’ of the flaws and to give recommendations for changes.
The foreign consultant engineer, who had no previous experience of working in Pakistan and was relatively unknown internationally, visited the site of the bridge and gave a go-ahead for construction with minor modifications.
After the collapse of bridge, when the inquiry committee sought the drawing calculations from ECIL, the company refused to provide them, claiming that they had ‘lost’ them during the shifting of their office.
The committee, in its report, construed the ECIL’s inability to provide the drawing calculations to mean that they were not the original designers of the bridge.
NHA officials
On NHA’s part, then Chairman Major-General Farrukh Javed, Member Planning and then acting Member Highways Raja Nosherwan and Northern Bypass Project Director Yousuf Barakzai were held equally responsible for insisting on the construction of bridge despite the faulty design.
The inquiry committee also found out that NHA’s General Manager Designs, Asim Amin, had raised objections to the ECIL’s design but Project Director Yousuf Barakzai took no action and kept the file with him until the bridge fell.
Chairman NHA Maj.-Gen. Farrukh Javed and Member Planning NHA Raja Nosherwan were also aware of Amin’s recommendation that an independent consultant be hired to review the design, but both took no action on his concerns, the committee had learnt.
Interestingly, the Raja Nosherwan is now working as Member Planning of the Capital Development Authority (CDA), Islamabad, despite the recommendation that a case be lodged against him for his involvement in the Shershah bridge collapse.
The committee further learnt that all reports sent by the NLC to ECIL and NHA, including the pre-stressing specifications, were ‘Okayed’ as the two had no interest in the stability and strength of the bridge.
The inquiry committee found no wrongdoing on the part of NLC as the fallen portions of the bridge remained intact even after the collapse, showing that there was nothing wrong with the construction materials used.
It was further revealed to the Committee that ECIL was the consultant of the entire 57-koilometre long Northern Bypass and it had acquired the project’s contract only for Rs850,000 – an amount that was so low that no other consultant firm could have even thought of taking it.
The recommendations
Holding ECIL as well as Chairman NHA Maj.-Gen. Farrukh Javed, NHA Member Planning Raja Nosherwan and NHA Project Director Barakzai responsible for the death of six people and a loss of millions to the exchequer, the inquiry committee suggested the cancellation of ECIL’s license by the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC).
It also recommended the lodging of criminal cases against ECIL and the three NHA officials. However, no FIR was registered against any of them.
At the same time, there was no FIR registered at any police station in the city for the death of six people, even after passage of over a year since the bridge collapse.
The seven-member inquiry committee, whose one member expired before the completion of the report, presented its report to PMIC, which, in turn, presented it to the PM Secretariat in March this year.
“The bridge collapse took the lives of six persons and even after passage of 6 months to the submission of probe report, no action has been taken against those held responsible by the inquiry committee, which is highly disappointing to us,” a member of inquiry committee said.
