NHA To Hand Over Toll Collection To FWO For Next 10 Years.

ISLAMABAD -- The National Highway Authority (NHA) will handover toll collection of its entire motorways' network to the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) for the next ten years.

An accord signing ceremony in this regard is scheduled to be held today (Monday) for which the NHA executive board has already given its approval.

The tolling operation is being handed over to the FWO under clause 42/F of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority rules 2002 - the direct contracting with state owned entities, which was introduced by the previous government to rapid procurement in the public sector in case of emergency.

Under the agreement, the manual toll collection will be replaced with the real time M-Tag based tolling on motorways.

It is pertinent to mention here that at present, the tolling operation on motorways are in the hands of different contractors, who pay a lump sum amount to NHA annually after getting contracts through a competitive process.

The toll collection of Islamabad-Peshawar Motorway (M-1), Lahore-Abdul Hakeem Motorway (M-3), Faisalabad-Multan Motorway (M-4), Multan-Sukkur Motorway (M-5), Hakla-D I Khan Motorway (M-14) and Hazara Motorway (E-35) are in the hands of different contractors including FWO on annual net guaranteed revenue bases while Lahore-Sialkot Motorway (M-11), Karachi-Hyderabad (M-9) and Islamabad-Lahore Motorway (M-2) are exclusively under the control of the FWO under long-term concession agreements as the same were constructed on Public Private Partnership Model.

FWO is the only company, which is currently using M-tag based tolling on motorways under its control but now it intends to replicate the model on all other aforementioned motorways by converting manual toll collection with the real time M-Tag based tolling.

According to the approval given by the NHA executive board, the tolling operation would be given to FWO under section 42(F) of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority Rules 2004 without open bidding and competitive process in the best interest of the public.

The total contract period would be ten years but initially it will be awarded for seven year further extendible for three years based on satisfactory performance.

FWO will do transformation from manual to electronic toll collection, provide hardware and...