KARACHI: Prime Minister Imran Khan would inaugurate the much-awaited Green Line Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), the port city’s first mass transit system, in Karachi tomorrow (Friday), Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar announced on Thursday.
Addressing a press conference in Karachi along with Sindh Governor Imran Ismail, the planning minister said Greenline was one the five big projects announced by the federal government under Karachi Transformation Plan that has been completed and rest will also be completed soon.
He said besides the BRT, the work on Mehmoodabad nullah has been completed and it will be inaugurated in two weeks while Orangi and Gujjar nullahs will be inaugurated in a few months.
Umar said Greater Karachi Water Supply Scheme dubbed as the K-IV project will be completed by 2023 which he said will reduce the water shortage.
However, the commercial operations of mass transit will commence from December 25 after a trial of about two weeks. The second consignment of 40 BRT buses finally arrived from China last in September.
The Green Line project, which was launched during the era of then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has suffered several hiccups over the years since its groundbreaking. Envisaged and executed in February 2016, the project was originally estimated to get completed within a year with an estimated cost of Rs16.85bn funded by the federal government.
However, it took more than five years and Rs35bn to finish and years of frustration, stress and painful experiences of hundreds of thousands of Karachiites who had to trudge through main Shershah Suri Road every day during painfully slow construction of the project.
