ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Communications, Abdul Aleem Khan, announced on Monday that construction work on the $2 billion Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway (M-6) and the Karachi-Hyderabad Motorway (M-9) will begin this year.
The announcement was made during a meeting of the National Highway Authority (NHA), which the minister chaired.
The M-6 motorway, a key segment of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), has faced a six-year delay. Recently, the Senate Standing Committee on Planning and Development instructed the NHA to prioritize the long-awaited M-6 project, ordering a halt to all other road construction projects to focus efforts on this one.
Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, in a recent session with the committee, committed to implementing its directives and affirmed that M-6 would be the government’s top priority. Last month, he stated that work on both the delayed M-6 and M-9 projects would begin in the upcoming year and proposed dividing the M-6 into three segments for more efficient execution.
In Monday’s meeting, Minister Khan also revealed plans to initiate work on the Mansehra, Naran, and Kaghan motorways in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa within the same timeframe. Additionally, he noted that the Quetta-Karachi Highway (N-25) in Balochistan is being upgraded to a four-lane motorway.
He further instructed officials to present a comprehensive plan for an 18-kilometer link road connecting Lahore to Kasur.
