Rs nine billion damage caused to infrastructure under NHA: Senate body informed

Federal Secretary, Ministry of Communication, Sharif Ahmed, has said that the physical infrastructure of the county has been badly damaged due to the devastating floods causing about Rs 9 billion losses in the flood affected areas governed under the National Highway Authority (NHA).
In reply to a query raised by Senator Mohammad Zahid Khan, convenor of the Senate standing committee on communication here on Friday, he said that damage assessment of the physical infrastructure, including roads and bridges, was under way. However, preliminary estimates showed that loss of approximately Rs 9 billion has been witnessed in flood affected areas falling in the jurisdiction of NHA.
"These are only rough estimates based on the figures collected from different cities taking into account preliminary damage assessment. The figure of revenue loss due to the damage of physical infrastructure would be ascertained when the flood water recedes in Punjab and Sindh. These are only rough estimates which would definitely go up in coming days based on regular monitoring of the damaged roads and bridges including motorways," he added.
He said that the floods had damaged around 40 bridges, governed by the NHA. Most of the bridges are of medium and small size which had been re-constructed under the monitoring mechanism of the NHA. In reply to another question, Imtiaz Safdar Warriach, Minister of State for Communication, said that damage assessment was under way to ascertain exact loss inflicted on infrastructure and communication network across the country by the floods. In this regard, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) are carrying out damage needs assessment.
Senator Zahid Khan expressed serious concern on the delay in blacklisting a firm, which was granted a contract to complete a project on zero-point GT Road Peshawar. According to the convenor of the committee, it had written a letter to the Ministry of Communication to blacklist a company and recover the amount paid to the company as advance. The committee had taken the decision to blacklist the company which failed to start work despite obtaining advance. The company obtained the tender in 2006, but the work has not been started so far.
If the Ministry of Communication would hesitate to take action against the company, the committee would be forced to take the matter to the privilege committee for further consideration, Zahid said. Responding to the observations of the committee, Sharif Ahmed said that the case had been moved to the Minister of Communication for approval and necessary action. A concerned official of the NHA informed the committee that an amount of Rs 165.5 million had yet to be recovered from the company in question.