KARACHI: Two 300-meter long wings of the Baloch Colony Bridge which had remained abandoned for the last five years have been demolished at a cost of Rs 60 million. In place of these wings, construction work on two 300-meter long service roads is underway at a cost of Rs 60 million, Khalid Masroor, a consultant on Sindh government mega projects has informed. The overall cost of the project comes to Rs 120 million. After dismantling the bridge site construction, 64 girders have been recovered in sound condition for reuse while the iron scrap and debris have been dumped at Dalmia KDA Pipe Factory. This project will be completed by April 2017 while any delays could be attributed to the shifting of utility services and repair etc. The building experts of bridges’ projects said that tender cost has been remained exuberant. “Usually cost on an identical job comes at around half of the tender cost”, claims Abdur Rehman, Chairman Karachi Constructors Association . He said that instead of using modern earth moving machinery, manual work for dismantling the wings has been undertaken, “which is fishy”. In 1992, the 1.5 kilometers long bridge was completed at a cost of Rs 35 million. “If you calculate the cost’s escalation after 25 years, the current spending on the bridge and allied jobs should not be more than around Rs 75 million”, he asserted. “There should be a probe by a competent authority under Sindh Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (SPPRA) Amended rule-2010 to ascertain why open tender had not been given while all of the process was kept indoors”. It is pertinent to mention that two wings have also been constructed in 1992 but experts denounced them as useless constructions. These old wings were left abandoned after 5 years of construction as they did not serve any purpose for commuters.