NHA making efforts to combat overloading Highways

ISLAMABAD—National Highway Authority (NHA) with the help of National Highways & Motorway Police (NH&MP) is making all out efforts to combat overloading problem and save national highways worth billions of rupees from destruction.
This was stated by Altaf Chaudhry, Member Operations NHA while talking with APP on Wednesday.He said that the NHA has the mission of providing friendly, environment caring, safe and efficient highway network, to improve quality of life in the country. He said that steps are being taken to ensure the implementation/enforcement of "Axle Overload Control Regime" in the country.
To arrest the menace of rampant overloading and to implement the regime effectively a number of measures have been taken so far, Altaf Chaudhry said.These measures include installation of 45 weigh stations at strategic locations completed and made operational while planned remaining 57 weigh stations will be installed by the year 2010. He said NHA has sought help of NH&MP for operating weigh stations and effective enforcement of Axle load limits.He said the NHA has been involved in frequent consultations with the stake holders by holding a series of conferences to resolve the overloading problem.
Member NHA further said that for achieving this mission the NHA is designing roads, as per international standards. He pointed out,due to overloading, life of roads is reduced from 10 years to 10 months while on the other hand wear and tear of the vehicles increases with higher risk of accidents. Member NHA made it clear that overloading is neither beneficial for the truckers nor for the road executing agencies.He stated that overloading is a menace with overloaded trucks plying on National Highways and Motorways playing havoc with road infrastructure.
In a bid to overcome the problem, more avenues are being explored and an important study on weight control management was undertaken by a Finland firm.He said this was done with the intention that some important and novel ideas and recommendations are formulated by a firm having global experience related to Axle Load Control which may help NHA to combat the overloading problem on the national roads. The said firm has made efforts to devise a strategy based on many useful recommendations to help control overloading. He hoped that the weight control management study will go a long way to overcome problem of Axle Load in Pakistan.
Along with the implementation and recommendations in this study, he informed, support and cooperation from the trucking community is also required.—APP