The Sindh government intends to build “plastic roads” in Karachi
KARACHI: The temporary chief minister of Sindh has instructed the authorities to investigate the feasibility of building “plastic roads” in the city, it was revealed on Saturday.
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A few months ago, an oil marketing business built the city’s first plastic-infused road using more than 2.5 tons of recycled plastic from abandoned lubricant bottles. The road measures 730 feet long and 60 feet wide.
The Sindh Solid Waste Management Board collects thousands of tons of solid waste each day from the city. It features two plants that can turn five tons of kitchen garbage per day into fertilizer and the same amount of plastic waste per day into raw recycled plastic.
A meeting of the works and services department was held to discuss the issue, and retired Justice Maqbool Baqar, the acting chief minister, went over the department’s development portfolio.
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He claimed that plastic highways were being built in the majority of nations and that cities needed them as well.
He gave the department the go-ahead to investigate the situation in depth and submit its recommendations for the appropriate course of action.
The works secretary gave the CM an update on the results of the inspections he had carried out in various Sindh districts.
He also presented the CM with a new inspection proforma and its department-developed parameters. In order to indicate the “causes and details about the revision of the scheme/project,” the CM instructed the department to add a new column to the inspection report proforma.
In addition, the CM instructed the works department to include a column to the inspection proforma that details the performance of the officers and contractor who worked on the project.
There is “zero tolerance” for poor work.
He gave the works department strict departmental orders to deal with unscrupulous officers who were harming various development projects with shoddy work.
He made it clear that there would be no tolerance for poor work, and individuals responsible would be put to work.
The CM was also given a briefing on a government handbook and mandate that had been given to various field formations and department offices.
He asserted that digital recordings, pictures, or videos should be present at every stage of any significant development endeavor. The captured material can be kept in the archives on DVDs or USB drives, the man explained.
The secretary gave the CM an update on his field trips to check out the construction and road development plans in the districts of Badin, Tharparkar, Umerkot, Tando Muhammad Khan, Tando Allahyar, Matiari, Hyderabad, and Sanghar.
In response to a question, he told the CM that his observations during the visit to the schemes included that no milestone was installed on the completed scheme, the quality of the roads was poor, especially in Sanghar, bridges almost in every scheme were not been attended to properly, shoulders of most of the schemes were not compacted properly, visits were not carried out by the concerned engineers, and record of completed schemes was not easily available on the site.
Justice Baqar ordered that official vehicles must keep up-to-date logbooks with all necessary information.
He argued that research initiatives should be started, particularly on the Indus Highway.
A third-party audit of all the taxes collected at the various provincial highways was also ordered by Justice Baqar, with the exception of those projects that are operating on a public-private partnership model. This is because, in the majority of cases, the toll charges were not reflected in non-tax revenue receipts.
