Repair of Swan Kak Bridge Road demanded

Islamabad : Residents of Model Town Humak and adjoining localities have demanded of the authorities concerned to immediately repair the Swan-Kak bridge section of the Kahuta Road as its pathetic condition can lead to fatal accidents anytime.

The road is in dilapidated condition where most of the vehicles are driven in zigzags to avoid rough patches especially near Sihala Police Station, Model Town Humak and the underpass connecting the Grand Trunk (GT) Road.

The underpass gives a pool like look even after a light rain due to deep and wide ditches and absence of any drainage system.

Last time, the Punjab government had reconstructed and widened the Swan-Kak bridge section of the Kahuta road by allocating special funds just before the General Election-2013, turning a blind eye towards its mandatory post-construction maintenance.

This segment of the Kahuta road is stretched over around six kilometres and has great strategic importance because it’s one end touches the GT Road and the other Islamabad Expressway, linking Azad Jammu and Kashmir with other parts of the country.

On one side of the busy artery is the Kahuta Industrial Triangle zone and on the other is residential area consisting of schools and colleges.

Muhammad Afzal, a resident of Model Town, told APP that the shaky movement of long and heavily loaded vehicles, carrying factory goods, on the bumpy single-road poses a great threat to commuters especially students studying in around a dozen of educational institutes situated along the road.

Often, the situation gets more worsened when long-vehicles, trucks and oil tankers are parked in long queues along both sides of the broken road, usually half on road, to wait for their loading and offloading turn in factories.

“This practice is going unchecked as there is no deployment of traffic police.

Narrow passage due to the dangerous parking and the ramshackle road are a constant nuisance for the residents, which needs immediate attention of the authorities concerned,” he said.

Adnan Ahmed, another resident, complained that elected representatives were also not paying attention to resolve the public issues. They (elected representatives) have disappeared from the constituency after getting votes in the general elections.

He said people of the area had rejected Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry in the Election-2018 due to his non-serious attitude towards the public issues and elected his opponent Raja Khurram Shahzad Nawaz, adding, they hope to see a change in typical interest-oriented attitudes of politicians.

Punjab Highway Department, Rawalpindi Development Authority, National Highway Authority and Capital Development Authority are putting the road maintenance responsibility on each other after approval of the Rawal-pindi-Kahuta Road dualization project by the previous government, which is now uncertain due to paucity of funds.

The residents have appealed to the authorities concerned to carry out the repair work on urgent basis to avoid any road tragedy.