by Yasir Habib Khan

Sukkur-Multan Motorway [Photo/Xinhua]

South Punjab, populated with impoverished people, lacks infrastructure development. Multan, a central city of South Punjab, is similarly poor in transport infrastructure. Likewise,Sukkur, an important city of Sindh, suffers the same fate. Both famous cities of Pakistan are languishing in poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment.

Over the last few months, Multan and Sukkur have started seeing a decisive turnaround in every sector.The reason is the recently completed Sukkur-Multan Motorway (M5) which has begun turning the tide steadily. From its flying start to fast completion, both Multan and Sukkur have begun experiencing an avalanche of socio-economic uplifts in the length and breadth of both cities and their surrounding region. The employment rate has increased considerably,as the M5 has employed more than 30,000 people,approximately 97 percent of which belong to the local community from the surrounding areas.

The Sukkur-Multan Motorway, a core portion of the Peshawar-Karachi Motorway (PKM) charged up the local industries involving construction materials, sand, cement and other materials besides a diverse array of businesses languishing over the past many years. The indigenous youth, unskilled and skilled, are ablaze with fresh hopes to excel in their respective fields. The M5 has helped shrink the distance and cut almost in half the travel time from almost 7 hours to 3 and a half hours. Since the new situation will lead to reduction of fuel consumption, the swelling burden of the oil import bill on the national exchequer stands to be minimized. Owing to shortening of traveling time, comparatively less fuel will be used causing less emission of greenhouse gases. The pleasant effect will go a long way in healing the regional ecology.

For local residents, the Sukkur-Multan Motorway is not just a simple road, but instead a corridor of prosperity and progress that has opened the flood gates of life-transforming fortunes. Some dub it as a blessing from the heavens to ease the residents’ difficulties and salvage them from smothering deprivations. After opening for traffic, the project will open up the major north-south traffic artery in central Pakistan, greatly improving the inter-city traffic situation of Pakistan, and directly drive the social and economic development of the areas along the project and benefit the Pakistani people.

Being a pivotal part of the Peshawar-Karachi Motorway (PKM), a mega road infrastructure on the eastern route of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the Sukkur-Multan Motorway has also become a source of women empowerment. Credit definitely goes to world-renowned Chinese company China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) for making all this happen.

Women Empowerment

A young girl, Tahseen Majeed working in the Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QA) department of the company is an illustrative example of CSCEC’s professional flair for providing a level-playing field to all without discriminating against anyone on the basis of gender.

Talking to China Economic Net, she responded that she loved CSCEC for fostering a high standard of merit, morality and humanity. “Here male and female are judged solely by their outputs, diligence and performance,” she added.

In response to a question about working environment and sexual harassment, she outspokenly revealed that the “Me Too” phenomenon never existed in the company. “CSCEC’s officials have developed a working atmosphere for both male and female staff where no onetries to exceed their limits and rather work and live in harmony,” she mentioned proudly. “It will not be an exaggeration if I say that CSCEC has given me confidence to work with male staff shoulder to shoulder weathering social, cultural and atmospheric challenges,” she pointed out.

At a time when anti Pak-China lobbies condemned CPEC, terming it a disaster for Pakistan, the Sukkur-Multan Motorway (M5), is making a splash as a symbol of shared destiny.

Mr. Ammar Yasir Magsi, a manager of project said that the miracle project M5 is known as a livelihood project providing everyone, especially women opportunities to grow together.,

Economic Benefits for the Local Market

He informed the reporter, the project is almost 13 days ahead of its completion schedule, as it started on August 5, 2016 and completed on July 23, 2019.

It was a hard nut to crack, he said, to source the materials locally as there was no system in place to streamline the procedure. However, CSCEC trained us to make possible the previously impossible, he claimed.

“The local market witnessed a boom because during all procedural requirements of construction of the Sukkur-Multan Motorway, all materials were procured locally. It gave new life to the local economy which was struggling to improve,” he opined.

All local procurement of materials and equipment was prioritized. A total of 100 million cubic meters of earth, 30 million cubic meters of stone, 500,000 tons of bitumen, 60 million bricks, 6 million tiles, 1 million tons of cement, 500,000 tons of steel, more than 9,200 sets of machines and tools, 500 million liters of oil, 16.11 million square meters of turf, 360,000 seedlings and a large number of daily supplies have been purchased from the local market. These material purchases directly boosted the development of the local earth-and-stone mining, transportation, equipment leasing and sales and other related industries, and indirectly provided impetus to downstream industries, injecting vitality into the local economy.

“Apart from this, a windfall came due to close proximity of M5 to native areas of staff. I am a resident of Bhakkar, near Multan, and had been earlier working in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan which is far from home. The PKM project has provided me opportunity to work close to my hometown that helped me to visit my family more frequently with ease.”

He further said that the climate, temperature, and environmental conditions posed formidable challenges in the completion of the Sukkur-Multan Motorway.

“The designated area of Sukkur and Multan is hot and dry all year round and the surface temperature can even go as high as 60 degrees in extreme cases. The extremely hot and humid weather drastically impacts employees' physical fitness, performance and equipment status taking a heavy toll on overall performance. In order to cope with situation, CSCEC scientifically coordinated, rationally adjusted working hours, used new technologies and new processes, improved material mix ratios, and finally overcame the challenges. In this process, teamwork did wonders,” he detailed.

Environment Friendly

The Sukkur-Multan Motorway, transport and carbon emission are correlated. Transport has a massive share in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions afflicting air quality badly. At present, the country's emissions are increasing at an annual rate of 6 percent, or the equivalent of 18.5 million tonnes of CO2. Pakistan's carbon emissions will reach 400 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (per year) by 2030. Pakistan is currently pursuing a goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent from 2008 levels by 2025.

Keeping in view environment scenario, the Sukkur-Multan Motorway has helped changed the fate of the ecosystem in the region, putting in a positive contribution in achieving the national goals set by the government of Pakistan. Technically speaking, owing to broken roads and the time duration required to cover the distance, vehicular carbon emissions have been peaking in a number of parts of Sukkur and Multan. However, after completion of M5, the distance has been cut to half,which will lead to lower transport generated carbon emissions.

The PKM project has a total length of 392 kilometers and the resource demand during construction was very huge. However, in order to avoid damage to the local natural environment, part of earthwork and sandstone materials for the project were collected from other places, and some even transported from seven to eight hundred kilometers away.

Quality as Priority

Mr. Xiao Hua, general manager of the Peshawar-Karachi Motorway (PKM) project of CSCEC said that because of the huge quantity and long distance, it was very difficult to do well the resource organization for the project. Through careful planning and reasonable arrangement, he said, challenges were met in a befitting manner, the production efficiency was ensured and eventually all goals were completed in time.

“The government and the overseeing National Highway Authority (NHA) cooperated with us sincerely and deserve to be praised. The government has given strong support to the project. And the NHA has always supported our work and gave us great help. We worked hard for a common goal that ultimately led to the early completion. The military provided us with security and deserves a tribute. For the success of the project, the military poured enormous input and paid a high price. It has provided us with full protection in terms of military strength, equipment and materials, ensuring the personnel safety and the smooth implementation of the project.” He admired the hardwork and wisdom of the Pakistani people.

“More than 97% of the participants in the project are Pakistani. Without their hardwork, wisdom and dedication, there will be no successful completion and the achievement today,” he added.

Mr. Ding Zhaojie, a senior official of CSCEC said that the company had always been carrying out the policy of "quality first" during the construction process. “Chinese, Pakistani and the American standards were considered, and the highest quality standard among the three standards was selected for quality control. The project established an in-house consultancy which had more than 220 ‘all Pakistani employees’ and ‘third-party functionaries’ to achieve standardized and normalized quality control. For the first time, the project listed deflection testing as a compulsory inspection item. Every layer, every lane and every 20 meters of the road surface were tested once in order to make sure that the IRI is 1.2, higher than China's domestic quality control standard. Thus, it ensured the construction quality and the riding quality which will make the Pakistani travelers more comfortable during their journeys,” he explained.

The PKM project (Sukkur-Multan section) has been undertaken by CSCEC on an EPC model, with a total length of 392 kilometers, a design speed of 120 kilometers per hour and 6 two-way lanes. The contract period is 36 months. The Chinese and Pakistani governments attach great importance to this project and have listed the project as an "early harvest project" of CPEC, and have given priority to promoting it.

The construction scale of the project is huge, involving many items, such as 100 bridges, 468 underpasses (1 underpass per 800 meters on average), 991 culverts, 11 interchanges (1 interchange per 35 kilometers on average), 6 pairs of service areas, 5 pairs of rest areas and 22 toll plazas. All the slopes along the alignment are protected organically by green grass; safety signs and an intelligent transportation system have been set up along the 392 kilometers; theFM broadcasting and wireless network are available in all service areas and rest areas.

Mr Qiao, a senior official of CSCEC said that the Sukkur-Multan Motorway was unique due to the installation of the night lighting system as no other motorway in Pakistan had such a modern facility.

Meanwhile, in terms of equipping local staff with new skills, Qiao said the project invited professional training institutions to carry out engineering technology and management skills training, and combined class teaching with best construction practices. As a result, they have cultivated for Pakistan nearly 1,000 engineering management personnel, more than 2,000 operators, and other professional and technical personnel in many areas such as maintenance, logistics.

He added, large numbers of farmers, once dependent on Heaven for food, had been transformed into skilled workers and operators engaged in the modernization of Pakistan. The project also sent a fully funded group of Pakistani students to study in China. In the next step, more training will be provided to a group of local motorway operation managers and operators so that they will manage the whole setup.  

Yasir Habib Khan, senior journalist, special commentator of China Economic Net.