Daily Times

HYDERABAD: Brigadier Tahir Siddiqui, Frontier Works Organization (FWO) Chief Operating Officer CORE project M-9 Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway, has revealed that the organization is the pioneer in BOT services. A new regime was introduced to Pakistan by FWO with the purpose to reduce the burden on the public sector for the development of large size infrastructural projects.

He stated that FWO takes pride in being the pioneer in implementing BOT projects in Pakistan in collaboration with NHA. The Karachi-Hyderabad motorway (M 9) is one of the BOT projects that has been achieved through a competitive bidding process.

On the occasion, COO GS Col. Mansoor Ahsen, Project Director M-9 Col. Rashid, Director BOT Daud Suleman and PRO Abdullah Hafeez were among the representatives of FWO. They briefed the media during a visit to their NooriAbad location.

Bgdr. Tahir said that the NHA has given the rights of its development and subsequent operation and regulator maintenance -to an FWO-owned private limited company ‘SCORE’ – for 25 years under a Concession Agreement. The company is lawfully registered in the SECP and observes all corporate governance regulations.

The overall construction cost of the project is Rs 37 billion. The FWO injects 30% as equity share while 70% is loaned from a consortium of local banks, which will be returned through toll revenue. It needs to be understood and made clear that the toll being collected during construction is being utilized for the construction and partially for debt servicing only.

The brigadier added that for the first 10 years, a major chunk of the toll will be used for debt repayment and the remaining will be used for operation, maintenance & management cost. After debt servicing (10 years), a sizeable share will be remitted to the NHA and will be utilized for other infrastructural projects.

The project constitutes an overall length of 136km out of which 120km will be the motorway section and 16km will be the urbanized portion. There will be 8 new interchanges and 2 existing interchanges will be developed. The latest Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) will also be provided. The project is not only limited to construction but includes Operations & Routine maintenance for 25 years (until 2040) and 2 years periodic or major maintenance Tahir informed the media that the project commenced in October 2015 with a predicted construction time of 30 months (April 2018). However, the FWO aims to finish the construction of the project by August 2017; much earlier than the scheduled completion time. The sole purpose of expediting the early completion is to reduce inconvenience to commuters during the construction phase.

He further added that recently, a localized failure has been observed near Loni-Kot temporary toll plaza with an approximate length of 1 km (0.5% of project length). These kinds of road failures are termed in engineering as ‘Rutting’ and are usually caused due to heavy/overloaded but slow traffic (resulting in exponential impact on the road). Required tests and coring have been carried out to investigate the cause of this failure. As per the requirement, rectification of the patch has already been completed. No extra finances will be claimed from the NHA or any other government institute for carrying out these rectification works. FWO has also installed CCTV cameras along the 136 km Khi-Hyd M-9 motorway to properly monitor traffic flow incidents through different state of art monitoring control rooms on M-9.

FWO officials stated that over 80000 different types of Neem trees (Azadirachtaindica), palm (Arecaceae) and Corn corpus have been planted alongside the road. Plantation work is carried out as per the elaborated horticulture plan of the M9 project. FWO removed only those bushes and trees which were unavoidable and were within the areas of construction.

It is unavoidable to have no diversion on a project like the M-9 – where construction goes side by side with the running traffic.