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China to build Karachi mass transit system

KARACHI - A Chinese firm, China National Machinery and Equipment Group (CNMEC), will build the Karachi Mass Transit Project (KMTP) at a cost of US$568 million.

Sources said that the project would include construction of the corridor for overhead mass transit facility from Sohrab Goth to Tower, via Teen Hatti. The corridor is to be built in two phases and the work is expected to be completed in four and half years.

The second corridor, according to the plan, would be constructed from Orangi to city Cantonment Station. It is Pakistan's first underground mass transit system is being introduced.

Recently the Chinese team headed by the firm's chief coordinator Tin Guangming met with the the City Nazim Naimatullah Khan. The meeting was attended by other representatives of the Chinese firm, the city's technical advisor Saleem Azhar; managing director of pemcom, N H Jaffari; DCO Mir Hussain Ali; director general of the KMTC Malik Zaheerul Islam, and others. They said the feasibility study covering the first corridor of the KMTP was in the final stage.

The delegation informed the meeting that the proposal, according to the agreement, had been approved and measures were being taken to start work on the project soon to introduce light rail transit in the city.

Progress on the feasibility study of the Karachi Mass Transit Project was reviewed at a meeting. The project has already been recommended by the ministries of commerce and finance, Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Exim Bank, SINOSURE and China International Engineering Consulting. Company, and referred to the China's State Council for the premier's final approval.

A mass transit master plan was prepared by World Bank consultants as part of the Karachi Development Plan 2000. It envisioned six corridors of elevated transit ways on the major corridors of movement in Karachi. The Urban Resource Centre (URC) raised objections to the plan and citizens' groups and nongovernmental organizations formed the Citizen's Forum on Mass Transit (CFMT).

They pointed out that some of the corridors ran parallel to the Circular Railway. As a result, the plan was modified to include three corridors of which the Circular Railway was one. Bids to Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) were invited for all three corridors and agreement was reached for the construction of priority Corridor One.

(Asia Pulse/PPI)

Sep 18, 2004

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