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Chairman National Highway Authority (NHA) Altaf Ahmed Chaudhry on Sunday appealed to the National Highways and Motorway Police (NH&MP) to help the authority in enforcing axle overload regime saving national highways from destruction.
Talking to APP he requested to the NH&MP to operate weigh stations on national highways. "NH&MP should take effective steps to control overloading problem on National Highways", he added. The conditions of highways and motorways were becoming bumpy due to overloading, and strict implementation of axle load law was needed and multi-axle trucks had to be encouraged to save roads, he said.
Altaf Chaudhry, said that the NHA does not have the power to implement "Axle Overload Control Regime" on the highways of the country. He sought help of NH&MP for operating weigh stations and effective enforcement of axle load limits.
NH&MP is operating some weigh stations on the national highways, he said adding that it should also come forward and operate other weigh stations because it would save billions of rupees spent every year on repair of roads damaged due to overloading.
Over 40 new weigh stations at strategic locations are being constructed while remaining about 50 more weigh stations will be installed by the year 2010, he informed. The Chairman NHA said that overloading is neither beneficial for the truckers, nor for the road executing agencies. He said that overloading is a menace with overloaded trucks plying on National Highways while playing havoc with road infrastructure.
To a question he said the NHA has been involved in frequent consultations with the stakeholders by holding a series of conferences to resolve the overloading problem. The NHA pointed out that due to overloading, life of roads is reduced from 10 years to 10 months while on the other hand, wear and tear of the vehicles increases with higher risk of accidents.
While contacted, Inspector General NH&MP Raffat Pasha said that the operation of weigh-stations on national highways was not in the purview of Motorway Police. However, on the direction of the former communications minister the NH&MP voluntarily took control of three weigh stations in Karachi, Sangjani and Mullan Mansoor.
"During previous regime most of the weigh stations were handed over to contractors under the policy of outsourcing. Moreover, the NH&MP needed additional staff for running the weigh stations but its demand for the same was not met, so manning of the weigh stations by NH&MP cannot arise", he asserted. The IG Motorway Police said weigh stations manned by private operators offload extra goods from the vehicles but let the overloaded vehicles go resulting in damage to highways and motorways. He further said there was need to set up warehouses adjacent to weight stations to keep the offloaded goods there.

Copyright Associated Press of Pakistan, 2008

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