During a recently held meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) in Karachi, China has promised to include dualisation of the western route into the landmark China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Chinese companies will now join their Pakistani counterparts to ensure swift completion of the project, Pakistan Today has learnt.
It is pertinent to mention here that some Pashtun politicians have been raising their concerns over claims that the route linking Gwadar and Kasghar has been changed. They alleged that the PML-N government had changed the original route and were not adopting the Hassan Abdal-Mianwali-DI Khan-Zhobe-Quetta route. The allegations were based on rumours that the government wanted to adopt existing Islamabad-Lahore-Multan-Sukkur-Quetta route, also called the eastern route.
A well-placed source in the government told this scribe that the decision was taken as a strategy to help remove misunderstandings over the alleged route change claims.
“In wake of the controversy being stirred by a handful of politicians about the change of route, the government of Pakistan has shifted its focus to construct the Hassan Abdal-Mianwali-DI Khan-Zhobe-Quetta, also known as the western route. In a major breakthrough made during the recently held JCC meeting, Pakistan asked China to include the western route dualisation into the CPEC for its early completion. The Chinese side has promised to do so,” the source said.
The source said that the Chinese delegation agreed to take up the matter with the Chinese authorities and it was decided that it would be a part of the agenda of the upcoming meeting of the JCC due next March.
The source said that the proposal of turning the western route into a dual carriageway had been proposed by the Parliamentary Committee on CPEC last month to “satisfy the smaller provinces”.
“The recommendation came after the government has been criticised for favouring the eastern route of the corridor, much to the dismay of officials in smaller provinces, i.e. Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP),” the source said.
The committee was given a detailed briefing by National Highway Authority (NHA) Chairman Shahid Tarar and the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) Director General (DG) Major General Muhammad Afzal. The focus of the briefing was on infrastructure projects under the CPEC with particular priority to the eastern route as already decided by the All Parties Conference held in Islamabad on May 28, 2015.
The minutes of the recently held JCC in Karachi on November 12, a copy of which is available with Pakistan Today, also refer to the proposal made by Pakistan.
“The JCC noted with satisfaction that, at the 3rd Meeting of the JWG on Transport Infrastructure, the two sides had reached consensus on the principle of ‘one corridor with multiple passages’ for CPEC transport planning, aiming at directly benefiting the socio-economic development of Pakistan, esp. the western and north-western regions, and providing effective connectivity to Gwadar Port. JCC highly appreciated the work that had been done by the experts of both sides on the CPEC transport planning studies, and approved the agreed Monographic Study on Transport Planning of CPEC,” said the minutes of the JCC.
The FWO, Pakistan army’s construction wing, has been working on a fast pace to complete some portions of the western route. Chief of Army Staff, General Raheel Sharif, had also visited the route recently and expressed satisfaction over the pace and quality of the work.
He had also told journalists that he had not expected the road quality to be like a motorway – but now it was going to take the shape of a motorway. However, after China’s agreement to fund the dualisation project of the entire route, the western route may be just like a motorway.
