Rahimullah Yusufzai - The News : PESHAWAR: The Lowari Tunnel project, conceived way back in 1956, has been left incomplete again much to the anger of the people of Chitral, the largest district area-wise in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The South Korean construction company, Sambu JV, stopped work on the project several months ago and the two European consultant firms quit even before it due to non-payment by the National Highway Authority (NHA). Since the stoppage of work on the project, the people of Chitral have been staging protests in Chitral town and Peshawar and asking the government to provide the promised funds so that the construction firm and consultants could be paid and work resumed on Lowari Tunnel. The Chitralis were looking forward to the early completion of the tunnel as it would have provided them access to rest of Pakistan all year round. The Chitral valley is cut-off from the country for almost five months during the winter due to heavy snowfall on the Lowari Pass, the 10,320 feet (3200 metres) high mountain pass linking Chitral with the Upper Dir district.On May 5, 2011 Sambu JV served notice on the NHA under the terms of their contract demanding payment of its outstanding dues. The 28-day notice period ended on June 3 and the next step by the South Korean firm was to write to the NHA to form a committee for final settlement. This would effectively end the participation of Sambu JV in the project. This would be all the more disappointing because 44 percent of the work on the project has been completed. “It is true that we stopped work on the project sometime back and have now served notice on the NHA for settling our accounts under the contract’s terms. How can we continue working without getting paid for the work that we have already done,” an official of Sambu JV said while requesting anonymity. This must have been one of the toughest contracts for the South Korean company. The weather is extremely cold and harsh at the Lowari Pass and there have been periods of insecurity in the area, particularly during the militant attacks in Malakand division, which includes both Chitral and the two Dir districts. The Sambu JV management was frustrated when its more than 500 employees and heavy machinery sat idle due to suspension of work on the project. Plans were hurriedly made to send back 17 Koreans working on the project and shift some of the 500 Pakistani workers and machinery to other smaller projects contracted by Sambu JV in Chitral. Hoping to get paid, Sambu JV continued to do limited work on the tunnel in absence of consultants who stopped working last October. All those hopes were dashed in June when one billion rupees only were earmarked for Lowari Tunnel project in the federal budget and the NHA allocations. As the NHA had to pay Rs700 million outstanding dues to Sambu and the Austrian and Spanish consultants’ firms, the remaining Rs300 million allocated for Lowari Tunnel wasn’t enough for the contractor to resume work on the project. This isn’t the first time that work on the project has been stopped. In fact, Lowari Tunnel has been an unlucky project. Perhaps no other project has taken so long to be completed. Work on it was first started in 1974 by the government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who enjoyed popularity in Chitral. It was going to be a 8.75 kilometres long tunnel to provide an all-weather road link to Chitral and reduce the journey time from Chitral to Peshawar from 14 hours by almost half.However, work on the project was stopped in December 1979 following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It is said the fear that the Soviet Red Army would be able to use the tunnel to cross over to Dir from Chitral before advancing downcountry to the heartland of Pakistan was one reason that work on Lowari Tunnel project was halted. If true, it was absurd because there is no evidence that the Soviet Union wanted to invade Pakistan to reach the warm waters of the Arabian Sea.The work on the redesigned project was started in September 2005. It was initially designed as a rail tunnel but was subsequently changed to road tunnel. The estimated cost was to be Rs5.4 billion, which later rose to Rs6 billion. Now the cost of the civil works is stated to be Rs8-9 billion. The December 2013 timeline for completion of the project would also be difficult to meet in view of the delays and suspension of work. The people of Chitral, forced in the past to travel at their risk via Afghanistan’s Kunar province and Bajaur Agency to reach Peshawar and dependent during the winter on the irregular PIA flights, would have to wait longer for Lowari Tunnel to be completed and made usable.