Appeal made to SHC to order widening of Indus Highway

HYDERABAD: With the increasing rate of accidents caused by vehicles spiraling up on the 136-kilometre (km) section of the Indus Highway between Jamshoro and Sehwan, an appeal has been made to the Sindh High Court (SHC) to order the broadening of the highway.

The court was also pleaded to direct the government to build a trauma centre and deploy motorway police on that part of the highway. “Accidents have become routine on the Indus Highway. At least four to five accidents take place [there] daily,” claimed the petitioner, advocate Javed Ali Buriro.

“The highway is being called a ‘murderous road’ with five or so people getting into accidents every other day,” he claimed. The petitioner referred to the April 13 accident on the highway, in which four persons died. “While I was travelling on the highway [that day], I witnessed the accident between the car and truck, in which four traders from Larkana and Kambar-Shahdadkot died,” he claimed.

He added there was no ambulance to shift the injured to a hospital in time to save their lives. “The injured and deceased were moved to the hospital in vehicles other than ambulances,” the petitioner added.

The section of the highway in question is a two-lane two-way road with sharp curves and turns. The Indus Highway or N-55, which is the second longest highway of 1,264km length, runs from Jamshoro to Peshawar.

A project to add two more lanes on either side of the 136km section between Jamshoro and Sehwan has been approved. It will be mutually funded by the federal and provincial governments. However, work on the road’s expansion has not started so far.

The petitioner accused the government of being aware of the high incidence of accidents due to media reports but not taking any immediate counter measures or expediting the expansion project. He deplored that two toll plazas on this 136km stretch are collecting toll tax but that money was neither spent on the road nor on providing emergency facilities.

He claimed that the motorway police have not been deployed on the highway to check overloaded trucks, passenger buses or speeding vehicles moving beyond permissible speed limits. The petitioner pleaded to the court to order the National Highway Authority (NHA) to build trauma centres after every 100km.

The Hyderabad Circuit Bench issued notices to the respondents, including the federal ministry of communication, NHA and Sindh chief secretary, to submit a reply by the last week of May.

Source: The Express Tribune