Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Communications and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) jointly organised a seminar on “Road Management: Enabling economic corridors through sustainable transport sector development”, at a hotel on Wednesday.

Secretary Communication Shahid Ashraf Tarar was the chief guest on the occasion. Country Director of ADB Resident Mission in Islamabad Xiaohong Yang, International experts – Forbs Johnston, Ian Greenwood, Janusz Sobieniak; and delegates from four provincial highway departments also participated in the event.

The Secretary Communications, in his opening remarks, welcomed the visiting delegates. He said the prime objective of the gathering was to raise awareness and benefits of performance based contracts (PBC) for roads and facilitate the sharing of practitioner’s experiences and best practices. He said that PBC approach was gaining popularity globally as it offers several advantages over more traditional approaches by saving cost in managing and maintaining road assets, developing the ability to manage the road network with fewer staff, and resulting in better customer satisfaction with road service and conditions. He informed the gathering that the National Highway Authority (NHA) had already established a separate wing for road asset management and was successfully operating regarding proper maintenance of the national road network. He hoped the seminar would help build capacity of the participants through emerging techniques of maintenance contracts. IkramusSaqlain Haider, General Manager of NHA Road Asset Management Wing, apprised the audience about the principle concepts and system components to optimise performance in maintaining road assets.