ISLAMABAD: After a gap of six years, the city managers have decided to restore toll plazas at the city’s entry points to collect revenue.

In its session on Tuesday, the Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI) approved the restoration of toll plazas at the entry points in Rawat, Golra Mor and I.J Principal Road.

MCI officials are expecting Rs2 billion in annual revenue from these toll plazas, which Mayor Sheikh Anser Aziz said will be spent on the provision of civic amenities.

The mayor told Dawn that in the next few days, the corporation will finalise the terms of reference for awarding the contract for the toll plazas. He said residents of Islamabad will be exempted from the tax.

“Before bringing the matter up in the house, our committee headed by Union Council (UC) Chairman Azhar Mehmood did work on the subject, so we are expecting a revenue of Rs2 billion,” he said.

The MCI session was held in the Pak China Friendship Centre with Mayor Sheikh Anser Aziz in the chair.

Other than giving the go-ahead for restoring the toll plazas, the house also approved the restoration of wooden stalls in different sectors. However, it was decided that consent from the Capital Development Authority’s (CDA) planning wing will be mandatory for this.

During the PML-N government, on the directives of then interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, CDA had in 2013 stopped collecting toll at the city’s entry points after completing their contract.

The contract for collecting toll on Kashmir Highway, Golra Mor ended on Nov 6, 2013, the contract for Islamabad Highway at Rawat ended on Jan 17, 2014 and the I.J.P Road contract ended in 2013.

Before the formation of MCI, CDA regulated these toll plazas and their control was handed over to the corporation after the local government was established.

MCI has not been provided with any development funds by the government and it is running its affairs with loans from CDA. Officials said money collected from the toll plazas will provide relief to the struggling MCI.

The MCI meeting also discussed parking fee and the performance of environment staff in detail. The mayor said that the environment wing is an important formation of MCI and that improvement in its performance is imperative.

He said environment wing employees are working in other formations which is affecting performance and directed all such staff to be immediately detached from all other formations.

The meeting decided that the chairmen of all UCs will monitor the performance of the Environment Wing in their respective UCs and will submit a weekly report.

UC Chairman Sardar Mehtab said MCI and CDA have been facing huge losses as out of a total 16,000 employees, around 4,000 are not performing their duties regularly as they are associated with labour unions and requested the mayor to look into the issue.

The house also discussed the issue of imposing a parking fee in various areas of the capital but could not reach a conclusion.

It was decided that a committee working on the issue will take the points of view of traders and other stakeholders before finalising recommendations which will be taken up by the house.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2019