*PESHAWAR: *Bus project in Peshawar, which has seen half the city upendedfor its construction, is facing further delays with officials suggestingthat the project will not be complete before “November or December”.
But as the city’s citizens face the possibility of coughing and wheezing intraffic jams for another six months, they would also have to fork out moremoney for the project.
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Finance Secretary Shakeel Qadir Khan, who wasaccompanying the Caretaker Finance Minister Abdur Rauf Khan in a pressbriefing on the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project, said that the revisedproject concept-I (PC-I) sent to the Planning Commission for approval hadlisted the total cost of the project as Rs68.7 billion.
Shakeel added that the initial cost of the project was slated to be Rs56billion. The planning commission, however, only approved Rs49 billion forit, forcing the government to drop some key components of the project.
He added that in the revised PC-I, they had added those components back.
Moreover, he said that the project was supposed to have been included inthe China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CEPC). As a result, the customsduties and taxes on the buses and other items being imported for theproject were expected to be waived off.
“Unfortunately the project was not included in CPEC due to which thecustoms duties and taxes are to be paid,” he said, adding that cost ofpurchasing land and material for the project have increased while theplunge the rupee suffered against the dollar over the past month has alsoaffected the costs.
The minister, meanwhile, said that they were pushing the deadline for theproject since the authorities dealing the project had told him in a recentbriefing that the project would be completed by “November or December.”
“The project has become very complicated and they [the governmentdepartments dealing the project] have made it very sophisticated. I wouldappreciate if they can complete it by November or December,” he hoped,adding that he was critical of the project before he got a briefing fromthe official in which he was informed about the work completed and thedifferent components of the system to facilitate the public.