Lashkar Gah Residents Welcome Paved Road
City is beginning to get metalled streets at long last.
Lashkar Gah Residents Welcome Paved Road
City is beginning to get metalled streets at long last.
In District 1 in Lashkar Gah, the air is thick with dust and smoke and reverberates with the sound of heavy machinery.
Living next to a construction site is not pleasant, but residents say they are happy to put up with the noise and pollution temporarily. Soon they’ll be driving on the smooth surface of a newly paved road.
Dost Muhammad is watching the construction crews at work. He says the project will benefit not only drivers, but also the people who live along the roadside.
“The construction of this road is very important for people. These roads get very dusty in the late afternoons. People get sick because of the dust. Building this road will improve the health of people here,” he says.
In the past five years, the municipality has only managed to pave five kilometres of Lashkar Gah’s rough dirt roads. This project will double the number of paved kilometres.
Mayor Ghulam Muhaiuddin says this is only the start of a major overhaul of the city’s streets.
“We have a major plan for the city. We have already surveyed the entire city. No road or intersection has been omitted,” he says.
The city has received funding for 32 new projects from the United Nations’s Habitat for Humanity programme and the Helping Afghan Farmers organisation, according to Muhaiuddin.
He says rebuilding this stretch of road will cost 480,000 US dollars.
Shopkeeper Mohammad Zahir says he’s looking forward to the newly paved road.
“It will ease traffic. Right now, vehicles cannot pass through easily because the road is so bad. When the road is finished there will be much less traffic in the neighbourhood,” he says.
About 300 public works projects are planned for the next couple of years, according to Mayor Muhaiuddin.
