The committee met with Senator Hidayt Ullah in the chair here on Thursday where National Highway Authority (NHA) and Ministry of Communications gave briefing on compliance report of the meetings held on 11th and 25th October, 2018. The committee agenda items also included reasons for substandard works (45 percent) done in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on emergent projects of repair work for which no payments were made and details of inquiry report of the committee constituted in this regard, discussion on mechanism of weight stations and toll plazas with their BoTs, and awarding agreements and tendering procedure as on utilisation of Flood Emergency Rehabilitation Programme (FERP) funds released during floods of 2010 and its present status.
Briefing the committee, the officials said that letters have been written to all NHA members with respect to weight stations. Ministry of Planning and Development has released Rs 25.6 billion so far while the remaining amount would be released in next six months.
The committee was further informed that toll tax exemption for parliamentarians has been withdrawn and now only ambulance and vehicles of fire brigade, Ministry of Defence and judges have immunity from toll tax. The committee directed to remove signboards from toll plazas with respect to parliamentarians' tax exemption.
The committee observed that rush at toll plazas is a matter of serious concerns as it is creating problems for the general public. Senator Usman Kakar said that the control of traffic load needs immediate attention. The committee was informed that measures have been taken to reduce rush at toll plazas and it has been tasked to FWO, while improvements are expected very soon.
The committee was further informed that there are 25 permanent weight stations on highways and 38 on motorways, besides 18 mobile weight stations. All vehicles carrying extra load than their limits are being sent back without imposing penalty on them.
All these weight stations were tendered as per NHA and NEPRA rules and awarded on BoT basis. Regarding illegal use of funds, the chairman NHA said that in light of the disciplinary inquiry committee report, six officers out of eight were given extreme punishment. Furthermore, payments to all those contractors have been stopped who did substandard work.
Senator Fida questioned how the emergency funds for floods 2010 are still being used. The committee members also raised questions on rehabilitation work of road projects. The committee deferred the parliamentarians' questions till the next meeting.