Consultants of the University Road, contradicting tall claims of the city nazim that the road would be completed before December 31, 2007, on Tuesday said long-awaited reconstruction of the road would take another four months.
"Reconstruction of the entire University Road will be final by March next year (2008) and not before that", an official of Techno Consultants International (TCI) told Business Recorder at site of the Rs 312 million project.
City Nazim, Syed Mustafa Kamal, in a late night visit to the University Road on November 29 (Thursday), had told the mediapersons that years-old reconstruction of the Road would be completed before 31st December 2007 as a new-year gift to Karachiites.
"Two teams are working day and night but utilities KWSB, PTCL, KESC, Sui Gas etc coupled with budget constraints in the past have delayed the project", he added.
Giving technical details of the reconstruction work, the TCI official said: "After being done with the Natural Ground Level (NGL) and the Sub-base, we are now preparing for the Aggregate work from Jail Chowrangi to New Town".
After Aggregate work the Prime Coat followed by a 5-inch Carpeting or AC Base-Course of the road would be undertaken and a 2-inch Wearing will give final touch to the road, he added.
"We have divided the work into two parts, the first part covers the area from Jail Chowrangi to New Town while the second ranges from New Town to Civic Centre" said another TCI official, who was inspecting placement of the "curb stones" or "curb blocks".
While the first part would be completed as per Nazim's claim, more time, he said, would be needed for the second part, where utility agencies were still busy in completing their respective jobs.
"Besides construction of storm water drains, lines of sewerage, water, telephone, Internet, Sui Gas etc are being shifted and being laid on an accelerated pace from New Town to Civic Centre and will be completed by March", he said.
Talking about quality of the road he said, with a 30-years warranty, the road was constructed as per international standards. "Normally, roads are damaged due to seepage of sewerage water but we have shifted the sewerage lines on footpath and are also constructing storm water drains", said the TCI official.
On maintenance of the road he said the contractor would be responsible for two years and then hand it over to the City District Government Karachi (CDGK).
He also acknowledged that the masses were facing serious problems due to belated reconstruction of the road. "Area residents have been complaining of sewerage problems as soon as the work was started while emergence of traffic problems was a natural phenomenon".
Meanwhile, an Outside Planners Supervisor (OPS) from Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation Limited (PTCL) said 90 percent work of laying the PTCL Internet cables was done. "After completing the copper work we need at least a week for laying a 25-kilometer optical fibre cable work which is going in full swing", he said.
He said the problems are temporary and the citizens would have great relief in the near future as all the utilities are being renewed to improve services.
On one hand, the University Road project has been a permanent source of trouble for the commuters, on the other it has equally made a disastrous impact on the businesses of shops, outlets and offices located on it. "We have faced financial losses in millions and it is still to go on, dug up roads have destroyed our business for the last three to four months", complained manager of a petrol pump located on this road.
Dug-up roads have not only kept the customers away from filling station, but also disconnected communication network of the pump by damaging the phone cables. "We had four telephone lines earlier but now only one is working and the rest are dead".
The city nazim, after acknowledging "some delay", had also boasted of timely completion of the Business Recorder (BR) Road, which he said was delayed due to the construction of storm water drains and shifting of utility services.
The BR Road, which is running as two-way with only one track open nowadays, as the other track has been dug up, remains all the time congested causing great risk to pedestrians, particularly students of Al-Noor College.
Moreover, to add further misery to the general public, the drivers are visibly seen striving hard to avoid a mishap particularly the BR and AAJ TV staffers can be seen inching towards their vehicles parked at the edge of a long trench dug up by the utility companies on left side of the one-track road.