HYDERABAD/NOORIABAD - Frontier Works Organization (FWO) Chief Operating Officer M-9 Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway Brigadier Tahir Siddiqui has said that the organisation is the pioneer in BOT services a newest regime was introduced in Pakistan by FWO with purpose to reduce burden on the public sector for development of large size infrastructural projects.

He said FWO took pride on being the pioneer in implementing BOT projects in Pakistan in collaboration with NHA, so that Karachi-Hyderabad motorway (M 9) is one of the BOT projects achieved through competitive bidding process.

On the occasion, COO GS Col. Mansoor Ahsen, Project Director M-9 Col. Rashid, Director BOT Daud Suleman and PRO Abdullah Hafeez briefed media during visit to Nooriabad location.

Brigadier Tahir said that NHA had given rights of its development and subsequent operation and regulator maintenance for 25 years under a Concession Agreement to FWO owned private limited company ‘SCORE’, which is lawfully registered in SECP observing all corporate governance regulations.

He said overall construction cost of the project is Rs 37Billion with details of its financing arrangement, underlying the fact that FWO injects 30% as equity share while 70% is loaned from a consortium of local banks, which will be returned through toll revenue, This needs to be understood that the toll being collected during construction is being utilized for the construction and partially for debt servicing only.

He further said not only had this for first 10 years major chunk of toll will be used for debt repayment and remaining will be used for operation, maintenance & management cost. After debt servicing (10 years) sizeable share will be remitted to NHA which will be utilized for other infrastructural projects.

The project constitutes of overall length of 136km out of which 120Km will be motorway Section and 16Km will be urbanized portion. There will be 8 new interchanges & 2 existing interchanges will be constructed.

Latest intelligent Transportation System (ITS) will also be provided. The project is not only limited to construction but includes Operations & Routine maintenance for 25 Years (till 2040) and 2 x Periodic/major maintenance

Tahir said project commenced in October 2015 with the construction time of 30 months (i-e till April 2018). However, FWO targets to construct the project by August 2017 much earlier than the scheduled completion time of April 2018. The sole purpose of expediting the early completion is to reduce inconvenience to commuters during the construction phase

He further told that recently a localized failure has been observed near Loni-kot temporary toll plaza with an approximate length of 1 Lane km (0.5% of project length). These kinds of road failures are termed in engineering as ‘Rutting’. These kinds of failures are usually caused due to heavy/overloaded but slow traffic (resulting in exponential impact road). Required tests and coring have been carried out to investigate the cause of this failure. As per the requirement rectification of patch has already been completed.

No extra finances will be claimed from NHA or any other government institute for carrying out these rectification works. FWO has also installed CCTV cameras at 136 KM Khi-Hyd M-9 motorway to proper monitor traffic flow and other issues, incidents through different state of art monitoring control rooms on M-9 FWO said.

FWO officials told that over 80000 different types of trees of Neem (Azadirachtaindica), palm (Arecaceae) and Corn corpus has been planted alongside the road. Plantation work is carried out as per the elaborated horticulture plan of M9 project. FWO removed only those bushes and trees which are unavoidable and coming within the constructible areas.

It is unavoidable to have no diversion on the project like M-9 with a construction goes side by side with the running traffic. It is utmost effort of FWO to have bare minimum diversion with least possible length and time. Currently there are 7 Diversions with total length of 6.5Km. Furthermore, for the convenience of commuter the maximum length of any diversion is not more than 2 Kms. Dedicated resources have been placed on each diversion of its regular maintenance

While, FWO has been taken following special initiatives as part of its social/corporate responsibility including  Construction and operation of non-profit based ‘Army Public School & Trauma Centre’ (working Round the clock) at Dumba Goth and another one under construction near Nooriabad industrial State.

Financial Support through third party insurance to the victims of any accident that attributed by the motorway police to ongoing construction activities by FWO. As per the concession agreement FWO can collect toll from old toll plazas and new toll plazas. However, special relief furnished to commuter by collecting toll on Motorway completed section only.

FWO is facing unique challenges during execution of this project  including construction activities concurrent with the huge volume of heavy traffic, Insufficient patrolling resources, disturbance from external stakeholders, availability of required land, especially for the interchanges, service roads and service areas and expanding litigation cases claiming land rights over ROW as well as the removal of encroachments FWO told.