RAWALPINDI: On Saturday, the divisional administration made the decision to change the PC-I of the Rawalpindi Ring Road (R3) Project since the price of construction materials has increased significantly, causing the project's construction cost to rise from Rs27 billion to Rs31 billion. Commissioner Liaquat Ali Chattha presided over a meeting of the Rawalpindi Division administration, the Project Management Unit of R3, the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA), and the representatives of the contractor Frontier Works Organisation (FWO).
The 38.3 km road project also needs 9000 kanal of land for its completion out of which 70 percent land has already been acquired. The meeting examined the urgent necessity to raise the project cost due to the numerous increases in cement, iron, petrol, gasoline and other building material prices during the past 14 months. The state of the land purchase was also covered. The project was given the all-clear in February 2022. But on July 31, a partnership between Turkish and local businesses suggested taking this way, and on August 8, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif officially opened the project.
According to the RRR Project, it is a 38.3 km controlled access road that starts at Baanth on the National Highway (N-5), travels through Chakbeli Road, Adiala Road, and Chakri Road, and ends at Thallian Interchange on the Motorway M-2. The project's entire cost is Rs 33.7 billion, of which Rs 27 billion is for building and Rs 6.7 billion is for buying land, and its total length is 38.3 km. The civil works of RRR include grade-separated interchanges, bridges, underpasses, toll plazas, and weighbridges, as well as walled ROW (90m). The road will have five interchanges and run at its design speed of 120 km/h.
Commissioner Liaquat Ali Chatha explained to Dawn that the majority of the land needed for the road had already been purchased and that the government still had Rs300 million available for the project. In the upcoming days, he promised, the funds will be used to purchase the remaining portion of the property."We also asked the Punjab government for Rs 4 billion to mobilise machinery and pay for other expenses. Since the homework for landmarking has already begun, we will begin the job soon, he said. He explained that the PC-I would be changed in accordance with the law and that this is not unusual given that the price of construction materials has increased since last year.
