By: M Sameer Nazir
Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) has installed CCTV cameras at 136 KM Khi-Hyd M-9 Motorway for proper monitoring of traffic flow.
This was said by Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) CORE project M-9 Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway Chief Operating Officer Brigadier Tahir Siddiqui during a press conference in Nooriabad.
The organisation is the pioneer in BOT services—a service introduced by FWO with a purpose to reduce the burden on the public sector for development of large size infrastructural projects, said Tahir Siddiqui.
The Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway (M 9) is one of the BOT project achieved through competitive bidding process, added the project’s chief operating officer.
On the occasion, COO GS Col Mansoor Ahsen, M-9 Project Director Col Rashid, BOT Director Daud Suleman and PRO Abdullah Hafeez –the representatives of FWO– also briefed media during the visit at a Nooriabad location.
Bgdr Tahir said that the NHA has given rights of its development and subsequent operation and regulator maintenance for 25 years under a Concession Agreement to FWO-owned private limited company ‘SCORE’, which is lawfully registered in SECP observing all corporate governance regulations.
The overall construction cost of the project is Rs 37billion with details of its financing arrangement, underlying the fact that FWO injects 30% as equity share, while 70% is loaned from a consortium of local banks, which will be returned through toll revenue, This needs to be understood that the toll being collected during construction is being utilised for the construction and partially for debt servicing only, he said.
For first 10 years major chunk of toll will be used for debt repayment, and remaining will be used for operation, maintenance and management cost. After debt servicing (10 years) sizeable share will be remitted to NHA which will be utilised for other infrastructural projects, he added.
The project constitutes of an overall length of 136km out of which 120Km will be a Motorway Section and 16km will be urbanised portion. There will be eight new interchanges and latest Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) will also be provided. The project is not only limited to construction but includes operations and routine maintenance for 25 Years (till 2040) and 2 x Periodic/major maintenance, he said.
Tahir said that the project commenced in October 2015 with the construction time of 30 months (ie till April 2018). However, the FWO targets to construct the project by August 2017.The sole purpose of expediting the early completion is to reduce inconvenience to commuters during the construction phase
He further told that recently a localised failure has been observed near Loni-kot temporary toll plaza with an approximate length of 1 Lane km (0.5% of project length). These kinds of road failures are termed in engineering as ‘Rutting’ and are caused due to heavy/overloaded but slow traffic (resulting in exponential impact road). Required tests have been carried out to investigate the cause of this failure. As per the requirement, rectification of patch has already been completed.
No extra finances will be claimed from NHA or any other government institute for carrying out these rectification works, he added.
The FWO officials said that over 80,000 different types of trees of neem (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.
It is unavoidable to have no diversion on the project like M-9 with a construction goes side by side with the running traffic, said the officials, adding, the FWO desires to have bare minimum diversion with least possible length and time. Currently, there are 7 Diversions with a total length of 6.5Km. Furthermore, for the convenience of commuter, the maximum length of any diversion is not more than 2 km. Dedicated resources have been placed on each diversion of its regular maintenance, the officials added, while addressing the press conference.
The FWO has taken many initiatives as part of its social/corporate responsibility, including construction and operation of a non-profit based ‘Army Public School and Trauma Centre’ at Dumba Goth.
