KARACHI: The Sindh High Court’s (SHC) directives were flayed by authorities concerned as the Lyari Expressway’s work has not been completed despite the completion of the court’s deadline.
Earlier on December 09, the SHC had expressed extreme displeasure over the provincial authorities for their failure to complete and warned that strict action would be taken against the responsible officials if they failed to complete work on the project until Dec 31. The court had ruled that the project should be open to the public by January 1, 2018.
The National Highway Authority (NHA) had told the Senate Standing Committee that the project cannot be completed on the deadline given by the SHC (Dec 31) in fact, it had given another for its completion. The Senate Standing Committee was told that the Lyari Expressway’s reaming work would be completed by Jan 05.
The project which was estimated to be completed in 2003 for Rs3 billion was now costing around Rs23 billion. Despite multi-billion rupees expenditure in the last 15 years, Lyari Expressway was yet to be completed due to negligence of the authority.
The SHC had come down hard on NHA while hearing a constitutional petition seeking compensatory funds for families shifted due to work on the mega project. The court remarked that the project was not completed expeditiously, the matter might be referred to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to probe the high cost of the project.
The lawyer representing the petitioners said that the people’s properties were acquired for the project, but they were not duly compensated and facing a great deal of difficulty. He said that the cost of the project might have been met so far if the project had been completed in the stipulated time.
The court was prayed to direct the respondent authorities to expedite the completion work on the project and immediately pay compensation to the affected people.