Abrupt digging and scrapping of main roads in the city during the last week of July and beginning of August has completely destroyed the meager road traffic discipline and has made vehicular traffic a nuisance for Karachiites.
A survey of the city on Tuesday showed that Nazimabad Chowrangi-Site road, Old Golimar Road, North Nazimabad Road connecting Block J with Block I, in districts Central, Jehangir Road-Tinn Hatti Road, Jail Road connecting with University Road are some of the examples which have made traffic jam a daily routine during peek hours.
City District Office sources said that major repair work was being executed to improve roads in the city. They said that the road repair and construction work would be completed before end of the current month so that fresh development work for the financial year 2005-06 could be undertaken.
Sources said that the outgoing Nazim issued work orders for these and many other sections of roads and it was only execution that had been initiated.
They said that the total cost of these minor and major works is less than Rs 1 billion. There is no escalation in price and revision of estimates would be done.
They also said that it had been made clear to all the contractors that they would have to complete all the ongoing schemes in time. They would follow specification and no price revision request would be made.
To a question about the role of traffic police, the sources said that police had been informed in advance about road repairs and construction and the likely disturbance to vehicular traffic.
During traffic congestion on Monday and Tuesday traffic signals on most of these under-construction roads remained closed and the traffic police managed it manually. The manual management did not work, as traffic on major roads remained suspended for hours.
The CDGK sources said that the contingency plan to deal with rains in the city would not be able to meet emergency that these dug up roads would cause.
They said that drain nullahs were not cleaned and choked, roads were under construction, vehicular traffic was increasing and all this would be enough to defeat the contingency plan of the city government.
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