On Thursday, the Public Accounts Committee summoned Capital Development Authority (CDA) chairman Noorul Amin Mengal to discuss Margalla Highway cracks.
PAC Chairman Noor Alam Khan expressed his apprehension about the Highway situation, stating:
This is a disturbingly urgent matter. We would like to know how cracks have developed in the new Margalla Road. Payments to the contractors must be stopped immediately whether it is the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) or the National Logistics Cell (NLC).
From GT Road to D-12, Margalla Highway is open for traffic. Due to unfinished work, including a 700-meter road section, it has not yet been formally inaugurated.
Khan noted that there are cracks on both sides of the road near the Shah Allah Ditta underpass. He brought the quality of construction into question.
According to CDA Member Engineering Syed Munawar Shah, newly built roads crack routinely and the road is incomplete. He added:
So far, handing/taking over of the road has not been done. But we opened it to facilitate the public. The cracks in question will be redone within a few days. In this portion of the road, we had to do a 10 to 12 feet filling.
Shah stated the that road other than the broken patch is “state-of-the-art”. Khan noted that cracks in the newly built Margalla Road indicate poor workmanship.
These type of cracks a text book example of what happens when you don’t lay properly the base course, which is the main load carrying layer of a flexible payment. Most of the time you will notice the workers are doing construction without the supervisor/site engineer.