The prime minister may have promised to release the funds for constructing the Lowari Tunnel, a project that has only seen broken official pledges, unkept schedules and escalating costs so far. What was billed to be the longest in Asia, the 8.54 km-tunnel is outrageously still nowhere near its completion. And even if - a big if - the prime minister makes good on his promise, the way the construction is going on in fits and starts, the Lowari Tunnel may in fact take a century to complete, if at all. It was way back in the late 1950s that people first started hearing of this project in the official chambers. But the ruling echelons just kept flirting with the tunnel, until Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's government put the project on the ground in 1975. But he too lost all infatuation with it in a short time and kept it hamstrung with funding starvation. His successors had no time at all for the project that means so much for connectivity to the snow-bound people of Chitral who remain cut off from the mainland for almost more than a year. Not even that self-styled great builder Mian Nawaz Sharif. He built a showpiece motorway in Punjab that was really not a pressing necessity, but thought not of the Lowari Tunnel which is such an imperatively needed construction work. It was indeed his bete noire Pervez Musharraf who made a serious effort to build the tunnel. He contracted out the tunnel construction to a South Korean builder and opened the purse-strings to fund the project adequately. But then he got enmeshed in his own self-inflicted travails and faltered on the tunnel's completion schedule by October 2008.Since then, it is a shameful story of missed deadlines, funding starvations and official disinterest. The succeeding PPP-led government in Islamabad has distinguished itself in regard to the project only by striking off the railroad from the tunnel construction, which was envisaged by the Musharraf plan. As for the rest, this government is making mark by missing the completion schedules. One set for September 30, 2010 it has already let pass on the obscene lame excuse of conditions of insecurity and terrorism. And all set it is to miss the next deadline of December 31, 2013 as well. For, not even half of tunnel construction is as yet complete. Moreover, if media reports are any guide, the construction work still stands suspended, the foreign builder has gone packing home, and there is no money to build the tunnel that now is estimated to cost over Rs.18 billion. Given the impending general elections, the government has other priorities to spend the scarce public money on to garner votes amid its fast-sinking popularity and sagging electoral chances.But no chances can be taken any longer either with the Lowari Tunnel too in view of certain cogent security concerns in Chitral. The region is palpably in the eye of Pakistani insurgents holed up in bordering sanctuaries in Afghanistan. They have been crossing over into the region and murderously attacking military border posts and civilian villages. By every consideration, their security threat to the region is rabidly in escalation. And it is of utmost import that an all-weather access to the area is easily available to the national security forces from the mainland to meet this threat effectively.Indeed, it is the security establishment that must insist on the political leadership to get fully and intensively engaged in the completion of the Lowari Tunnel on priority basis as early as possible. Of course, this leadership, like its peers of the past, has never ever felt any qualm or embarrassment that our compatriots of Chitral have to face numerous hassles and impediments in travelling to the mainland through the Afghan territory for months in a year. But an all-weather free access to the mainland could give a tremendous fillip to the economic betterment of the residents of this mineral-rich region, with a picturesque landscape that is dreamland for any tourists. And a prospering and gratified citizenry in itself could really be a big reinforcement to the security forces in defending the country's borders and fighting out the intruders whoever they may be. If the prime minister is any real, he would thus see the wisdom of constructing the tunnel as scheduled and would play no hanky-panky in releasing the promised funds to this end. Courtesy Frontier Post