RAWALPINDI: The Punjab government has released an additional amount of Rs150 million for the repair of two major roads even though Rs600 million was spent on the roads last year and an inquiry was underway on alleged substandard work.

The Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA)launched the reconstruction of Adiala Road and Chaudhry Bostan Khan Road from Chaklala Scheme-III to Lahore High Court Rawalpindi bench in 2014 and completed the work in 2016.

An amount of Rs284 million was spent on Adiala Road and Rs316 million on Chaudhry Bostan Khan Road. But Adiala Road started caving in at dif ferent places soon af ter its completion last year.

Upon this, PML-N MPA from PP-6 Chaudhry Sarfraz Afzal informed Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif about the use of substandard material on the reconstruction of the road. The chief minister directed Commissioner Azmat Mehmood to look into the matter.

Later, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan asked the commissioner to hold an inquiry into the matter as both the roads are located in his constituency (NA-52).

The commissioner formed the committee consisting of officials of the communication and works department and the local administration. However, it is yet to submit a report.

A senior official of the local administration told Dawn that during the initial inquiry last month the committee found that substandard material had beenused in the reconstruction of the Adiala Road while the condition of the other road was comparatively better.

He said the RDA, being the execution agency, failed to monitor the work and the contractor did not construct the roads as per the standard. He said the contractor was brother of a senior PML-N1eader.

On the other hand, the provincial government on Tuesday released the Rs150 million to repair the roads and tasked the RDA with the execution of the project.

`A sum of Rs86 million will be spent on Adiala Road and Rs64 million on Bostan Khan Road. The work will be started as soon as possible,` said RDA Director Engineering Akram Soban.

Meanwhile, the RDA on Wednesday expressed dissatisfaction over the reconstruction of Rawal Road to connect Airport Road with Murree Road.

The RDA director engineering visited Rawal Road and expressed his dissatisfaction on the quality of work carried out by the contractor. He noticed that many patches of the road had got damaged during the ongoing rains.

The resident engineer of the RDA briefed the director that the substandard work had been pointed out to the contractor when the road was being repaired. He said the authority had also issued notices to the contractor and stopped payments to him.

The project included 8.3 km re-carpeting work, installation of streetlights, including 265 LED lights, 65 lampposts, traffic signals, expansion of Kurri Road and cleaning of drains.-Aamir Yasin