LAHORE: Punjab is set to get a dedicated road repair force in each of its districts under a plan approved by Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday, in what officials describe as a shift from reactive patchwork to daily, monitored upkeep of the province’s road network.
According to an official statement issued on Tuesday, the Chief Minister approved the establishment of a Special Road Maintenance Squad in every district, tasked with daily inspection, upkeep, cleanliness and the timely repair of damaged roads. The decision was taken during a special video-link meeting with commissioners and deputy commissioners convened to review ongoing development projects across the districts.
The statement said the Chief Minister directed the authorities to put in place an effective monitoring mechanism covering the scope, timelines, quality, expenditure and physical progress of every project. She instructed commissioners and deputy commissioners to ensure close monitoring of development schemes and to resolve issues as they arise, in order to maintain quality and prevent cost overruns.
That last instruction is the one civic administrators are likely to feel most directly. Cost escalation on district-level infrastructure schemes — where a project sanctioned in one financial year is completed two or three years later at a substantially revised cost — has been a recurring theme in provincial audit observations and Public Accounts Committee proceedings for years. Tying the divisional and district administration to progress, expenditure and timelines in a single reporting framework is an attempt to close that gap.
On road safety, the statement said the Chief Minister ordered the mandatory installation of cat’s eyes on specified urban roads and directed the use of thermoplastic road markings for greater durability. She also directed that appropriate lane markings, traffic signs and directional signage be ensured, and that all road safety measures conform to approved technical standards.
The technical choice here is not incidental. Conventional paint markings on high-traffic urban carriageways degrade quickly under heavy vehicle loading and monsoon conditions, while thermoplastic material is thicker, longer-lasting and retro-reflective — which is precisely the property that matters after dark and in fog. Punjab’s motorway and GT Road corridors record a heavy share of night-time and low-visibility collisions during the winter smog season, and lane definition is a documented factor in that pattern.
The Chief Minister further directed that lighting installations be energy-efficient, durable, safe and easy to maintain, and that electricity poles along designated roads be properly illuminated or decorated.
In a notable departure from a familiar template of local development, the statement said the Chief Minister directed that concrete entrance gates should not be constructed at the entry points of cities and tehsils. Instead, each city’s name is to be displayed on a landscaped, green plot at its entrance, with median designs and landscaping provided at district entry and exit points.
She said district entry points should feature modern, contemporary designs, with Chinese city entrances serving as a reference, while approved design concepts should be followed for tehsil entrances with suitable modifications according to the local context.
The Chief Minister also ordered that roads should not have concrete structures in the middle without planters, and called for the proper landscaping of medians.
The statement said the Chief Minister ordered that food streets be planned as designated and separate commercial areas with adequate infrastructure, cleanliness, parking and traffic arrangements. She also directed the authorities to improve access, sanitation, traffic management and organised commercial activity at vegetable markets across the province.
Both instructions address a well-documented friction point in Punjab’s urban centres, where informal food clusters and wholesale vegetable markets generate parking overspill and traffic bottlenecks on adjoining arteries — a pattern visible around Lahore’s own market nodes during peak evening and early-morning hours.
The Chief Minister stressed that all projects must be completed according to approved designs, materials and technical standards, adding that there would be no compromise on transparency and quality.
The announcement lands against a road network that has visibly deteriorated in several districts following successive monsoon seasons, with surface erosion, edge collapse and unrepaired utility cuts among the most common complaints routed to district administrations and municipal helplines.
The operational questions the notification does not yet answer are the ones that will determine outcomes: the sanctioned strength and skill mix of each squad, whether personnel will be drawn from existing Highways and municipal establishments or hired afresh, the budget line the squads will draw on, and which office — the deputy commissioner, the local government department, or Communications and Works — will own day-to-day command. Districts vary widely in road length and traffic load, and a uniform squad size would not serve Rawalpindi and a smaller district equally.
Implementation now moves to commissioners and deputy commissioners, who have been made directly answerable for monitoring, quality assurance and the timely resolution of project bottlenecks. The credibility of the initiative will rest less on the announcement than on whether the squads are visible on district roads in the weeks after notification — and whether repairs hold through the next monsoon cycle.
The Lahore Times will update this report as implementation details, including squad composition and funding arrangements, are officially notified.
Leave a Reply