Daily Times

National Highways Authority (NHA) on Wednesday said that about 51 per cent physical progress on improvement, up-gradation and expansion of 167 kilometres strategic Skardu- Jaglot Road (S-1) has been achieved so far. An official of NHA told APP that work on Rs 31,000 million project had been started in July 2017. During previous fiscal year from Public Sector Development Programme, he said Rs 8,000 million had been spent whereas Rs 9,000 million have been allocated for the project in the PSDP 2020-2021. The official said that the project has been assigned to Frontier Works Organization (FWO) which had laid the initial track in 1980s. The road, the official said, a major link between Karakoram Highway and Skardu has 3.66 meters width of black top. The difficult terrain has intense snowfall and major rock sliding, the NHA official added. He said that its up-gradation would enhance the comfortable road ride to locals as well as tourists by increasing the width of road from 3.6 to 7.3 meters and reducing the sharp curves. The project is likely to be completed by September 2021.