KARACHI: The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) failed to complete the construction of New International Islamabad Airport (NIIA) despite many deadlines and the construction of roads delayed its inauguration this time around, sources said.
Since the National Highway Authority (NHA) provided poor planning of roads, inauguration has once again been delayed.
The postponement of New Islamabad International Airport’s inauguration after many deadlines speaks huge volume of Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) apathy and incapability.
Earlier to this the former prime minister had set a deadline to inaugurate New Islamabad International Airport on August 14, 2017, and then later on it was announced to inaugurate the project in December this year, but the flawed planning of NHA led to incomplete roads which caused delay once again in the project.
The project was ill-conceived initially which led to more and more delays. In many other reasons for causing delays to the project are the poor planning of the National Highway Authority (NHA) in roads construction also played its role.
The two dams naming Rama and Kassana are also being constructed for the storage of water for Airport use. The Rama dam is at its final stage and works for the other dam of Kassana is underway.
The delaying in the inauguration of NIIA is causing its costs to increase accordingly since its initial cost was Rs 32 billion when it was first planned in 2007, however, the initial plan of the project did not include the funds for radars, lights and water supply.
And then later on its cost was increased to Rs 82 billion at the completed work of 97 per cent according to officials of the aviation division.
It is also pertinent to mention here that the Advisor to PM, Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan in a meeting on Monday with D-8 countries said that the New Islamabad International Airport would be operational soon in the first quarter of 2018.
While talking to Pakistan Today, the PRO of Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said that the delay in the complete construction of New Islamabad International Airport is due to the road works and many other projects like metro etc inculcated later on in the mega project and due to many other technical reasons as well. Completion is at its final stage in this regard and the inauguration of the Airport will be announced in 2018 as per Advisor to PM said, the PRO added.
