ISLAMABAD: The National Highway Authority (NHA) is carrying out a vigorous campaign to remove the encroachments from ‘right of way’ (RoW). The NHA with the cooperation of district administration, police and the National Highways and Motorway Police (NHMP) is removing encroachments from the (RoW) under the National Highway Strategic Road Control Rules 1998, said a NHA official on Wednesday. He said that the authority was removing different types of encroachments varying from permanent structures like shops, hotels and buildings to temporary structures like kiosk, stacked materials, sheds, canopies and concrete structures from Rawalpindi-Lahore section of Grand Trunk Road (N5). The NHA, he said, was making efforts to deploy an encroachment squad at regional level to ensure timely action to avoid the encroachments. He official said the Lowari tunnel project would be completed by March 2017. About unusual delay in the completion of the project, he said that work on Lowari tunnel project, which started in September 2005, was supposed to be completed by 2008. However, its completion time was extended when the then government decided to convert it into a road tunnel in 2009, rather than the rail tunnel as per the original plan. He said that the idea of Lowari tunnel project was floated by then MNA Jaafar Ali Shah in 1970s. He said that work on the tunnel began for the first time in 1975 but it was stopped in 1977 on the pretext of lack of funds and other development priorities. “The work did not resume until September 2005. Long winter season coupled with delay in release of funds, earmarked for the projects, were among others reasons for slow pace of work on the project,” he added. He said that the present government approved additional funds for a revised PC-I of the Lowari tunnel to ensure its completion as early as possible. During his visit to Chitral in October 2015, he said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif directed the NHA to complete the project on priority basis. After completion, the tunnel will reduce the current 14-hour drive from Chitral to Peshawar to seven hours only, the official said.