$2 Billion Work to be Done on Two Major Motorways
Wire desk byline Sourced from Xinhua, Dawn, Arab News, Anadolu and Minute Mirror. Translated and abridged by the GSRRA Desk.
Federal Minister for Communications Abdul Aleem Khan has announced that construction on the long-delayed Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway (M-6) and the Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway (M-9), with a combined cost of $2 billion, will begin this year.
He made the announcement while chairing a meeting of the National Highway Authority (NHA). The M-6 project, which is a key component of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), has already faced a delay of six years. In a recent development, a Senate panel instructed the NHA to prioritise the M-6 project over all other road schemes.
The Senate Standing Committee on Planning and Development also directed the NHA to suspend work on other projects and immediately start construction on M-6. Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, present at the meeting, assured the committee of full implementation of its directives, confirming that M-6 would be given top priority.
Last month, Mr Iqbal had stated that construction on both M-6 and M-9 would begin next year and even suggested splitting the M-6 project into three sections to speed up progress. However, Abdul Aleem Khan has now confirmed that both projects will move forward this year.
The minister further revealed plans to launch work on motorways connecting Mansehra, Naran, and Kaghan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa within the same timeframe. He added that the Quetta-Karachi Highway (N-25) in Balochistan is also being upgraded to a four-lane motorway.
Additionally, he called for submission of a comprehensive plan for an 18-kilometre link road connecting Lahore to Kasur.
Reference Link:- https://propakistani.pk/2025/04/22/2-billion-work-to-be-done-on-two-major-motorways/
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
