LARKANA -  Major General Mohammed Afzal, director general of the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO), has said the Sindh government has been advised to develop Malir Expressway from the Karachi industrial port to motorway to connect the province to Gwadar and other national highways.

He said the road infrastructure played a vital role in trade development. He said the Malir Expressway would connect heavy traffic of the port industrial areas such as Korangi, Landhi, Pakistan Steel Mills, Port Qasim and upcountry traffic through the motorway to the Gwadar International Seaport.

He said the FWO in collaboration with the Chinese and Pakistani governments successfully paved the way for trade activities in the region. He said it was an impossible task, but the road infrastructure under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) had been completed within the stipulated time. He said that laying railway tracks and pipelines was a gigantic task. He laid stress on development of railway network and pipelines on western routes in line with the CPEC objectives. He said that connecting the existing railway network to central and eastern routes was also a must for 100 percent achievement of CPEC objectives. He said the nation needed a breakthrough in the form of Gwadar International Seaport for a prosperous Pakistan.

The FWO chief said that CPEC proved a game changer for Pakistan. He said that people of Balochistan would see development and immense trade activity from Gwadar to various regional countries. He said this development would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the area. He said that tourism would also get a boost with the completion of CPEC projects.

Afzal said it was a dream to connect various routes of the CPEC through the road network, but this dream had now come true. He said that meetings with a Chinese firm and other stakeholders remained successful and “we successfully carried Chinese trade goods from Kashgar to Gwadar using the western route, central route and the existing railway network”.

He said it was just the beginning of a journey of prosperity because Pakistan was fast transforming Gwadar into an international seaport city. He said that Gwadar would become a world class seaport and an important regional trade centre.