The Punjab government has agreed to begin construction of the Lahore Ring Road’s Southern Loop-3 (SL-3) in the next few months after the cabinet approved the scheme’s Rs17.798 billion PC-I, opening the door for money to be released under the next fiscal’s Annual Development Programme.
Due to the claimed influence of a ‘powerful’ real estate mogul, the project was stuck in dispute since 2016.
According to an official source, the programme will now be finished by the government using its own financial resources rather than through the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model, which was previously worked out and finalised. ?Now we have been given a go-ahead for launching the construction work, the official said.
He stated that the government had already bought the?property for the project and had provided full compensation of Rs4.5 billion to landowners/affectees, including those whose homes were built along the SL-3 route through Bahria Town.
He further said that because all of the property acquired for the project has been put in the name of the government, the LRRA will face no difficulty in beginning work. He stated that the LRRA will begin bidding and other preparatory work soon in order to award the project to an appropriate contractor via a competitive bidding process.
The official noted that the government appears to be interested in constructing the Ring Road’s SL-4, which runs from Maraka (Multan Road) to connect the Lahore-Karachi motorway.
Moreover, he stated that a western loop will be built to connect the ring road to the Lahore-Islamabad Motorway (M-2). He also claimed that despite the fact that the last stay order had been lifted in April 2021, the PTI government in Punjab refused to give the authorities permission to begin building.
The SL-3 runs from Raiwind Road’s Adda Plot to Multan Road’s Maraka, going via Bahria Town.