LDA finalizes Lahore twin tower project

LAHORE: Much awaited news for Lahoris has finally arrived as Lahore Development Authority has finalzed the construction of 29 storey twin towers on Jail road, Lahore.

As per DCiP sources, Benevolent Fund department will provide Rs. 2 billion to LDA. Land casting will be done in Rs. 1 billion and 400 million. LDA will provide Rs. 600 million to contractors and Rs. 504.7 million will be obtained through advance booking. Advance booking is expected to start after the construction of first ten floors.

Location

Twin tower will be built on a plot on Jail road next to Qurban lines beside Lahore Cantonment railway station.

Features

Twin tower will be 300 ft tall structure and will have 25 floors above ground and 4 basements. It will be a mixed-use building. Features are as follows:

• Commercial Center
• Offices
• Shopping Mall
• Apartments
• Playland
• Cinema
• Swimming Pool
• Five star hotel
• Roof top restaurant
• Food Court

Timeframes and deadlines

Pre-qualification of contractors will be completed by 15 August 2017. Tender documents will be provided to contractors in September 2017. Successful contractor will get Civil Contract Award in October 2017.

Construction of basement will be completed by 15 January 2018. First 3 floors will be completed by May 2018. 10 floors will be completed by Oct 2018. While entire 25 floors structure will be topped out in June 2019. After that interior work and cladding will start.

Daewoo Launches Its Own Ride Hailing App

Daewoo which was one of those premium cab services back in the old days has now released a new app to compete with other ride hailing apps Careem and Uber directly.

The service is available in the following cities:

• Lahore
• Rawalpindi/Islamabad
• Karachi
• Multan
• Peshawar
• Abbottabad
• Sialkot
• Faisalabad
• Sukkur

 

Users in Karachi will be able to use the promo code DAEWOOFIRST to get Rs. 300 off their first ride in the city.

Daewoo offers business cars only (Toyota Corolla XLI and similar cars) and is much more expensive in comparison. The fare is much higher than Careem or Uber. A similar route (as seen in the image above) costs Rs. 230-250 on Careem Go and Rs. 150-200 on UberGo (Rs. 480 through Daewoo Cab). Granted the service offers business cars only but not everyone can afford to pay that much on every trip. Swipe right from the main booking page and you can access payment options, editing your settings, ride history, contact info etc. The wallet option is particularly useful if you have used Careem. Daewoo has picked up on that and added it in their app.

You can also add an EasyPaisa account or credit/debit card for payment by tapping on “Add Payment Method”. This gives the app a slight advantage in terms of payment options versus its rivals which don’t offer EasyPaisa payment.

Contract of Lahore airport expansion awarded to Chinese company

The Pakistani government has awarded a contract worth nearly $382 million to a Chinese company to reconstruct Lahore's Allama Iqbal International Airport, the Chinese state-owned People's Daily newspaper reported Tuesday.

China Construction Third Engineering Bureau won the 2.6 billion RMB contract to engineer, procure, and construct the reimagined Lahore airport, which will become Pakistan's largest after the reconstruction is completed, the report claimed.

"It is the largest project that the Third Engineering Bureau has undertaken overseas, marking another important achievement in Belt and Road construction," the newspaper, which is a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, said in its report.

Prior to this, the same Chinese company was awarded a number of major projects in Pakistan including the Karachi-Lahore Expressway between Sukkur and Multan, Lahore's Arfa Software Technology Park, and The Centaurus Hotel.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has championed what China formally calls the “One Belt, One Road” or OBOR initiative to build a new Silk Road linking Asia, Africa and Europe, a landmark programme to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure projects including railways, ports and power grids.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the flagship programme of OBOR. The construction of an international airport in Gwadar is also part of CPEC.