Nato supplies caused Rs 100 billion damage to roads, National Assembly informed

The government on Monday informed the National Assembly that Rs 100 billion damage has been caused to the roads in the country due to Nato supply. This was stated by the Minister for Communication, Dr Arbab Alamgir Khan, while responding to a question in the National Assembly.
The Minister said that the government has been unable to get compensation despite efforts and only $67 million was provided for maintenance of Peshawar Torkhum road. He said that repair work of the Peshawar-Torkhum road has been started. The Minister said that the 2010 floods have damaged various sections of 13 National Highways and around 410 kilometres roads and 20 bridges were completely damaged while 383 kilometres roads and 26 bridges were partially damaged. He further informed the National Assembly that National Highway Authority (NHA) has undertaken reconstruction of above-mentioned damages through Asian Development Bank's (ADB) loan US $245 million and Chinese grant US $190 million in total 46 contract packages at a cost of Rs 4.27 billion. All the works, he said is expected to be completed by September 2014.
Secretary for Parliamentary Affairs, Ministry of National Food Security, Natasha Doltana informed the House that steps are being taken by National Tea Research Institute, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council to increase tea cultivation in the country. The government, she said, started tea cultivation in the northern parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and planted tea on 607 acres by National Tea Research Institute (NTRI) in districts Mansehra, Battagram and Swat.
She said that Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) imported a processing plant during the year 2001 with the capacity of one ton tea per day from China and installed at NTRI, for processing the black tea from the raw material obtained from tea gardens at NTRI and farmers fields.
A pilot green tea plant with the capacity of 80-100kg tea was also installed with the financial assistance of Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF), Islamabad at NTRI, Shinkiari during 2005. Similarly, a pilot green tea processing plant of 50kg capacity was installed by NTRI for Tea Development Cell, KPK at Matta, Swat.
She also informed the House that Pakistan imports black tea from 19 different tea producing countries and during 2010-11 black tea 127,316 MT valued Rs 25.03 billion and 3,322 MT of green tea valued Rs 353 million, and during 2011-12, (excluding 2 months, February and June) 101,032 MT of black tea valued Rs 22.5 billion and 3,024MT of green tea valued Rs 364 million, was imported.