Angry residents start building damaged road

CHITRAL, Feb 1: The people of Kuragh and Charun villages adopted a novel way to lodge their protest against the apathetic attitude of the government towards the reconstruction of Chitral-Booni road which was waiting rehabilitation after being washed away by torrential flooding four years back. About one thousand villagers thronged to the site on Friday as per schedule announced by them earlier and started digging the ground and the hillock to rehabilitate the road and continued their work for more than six hours. One Shahid Murad, a former junior commissioned officer of militia, said the road was washed away four years ago and the commuters were forced to use a lengthy alternative route along the river bank which took extra time of forty minutes. He said that after being highly disappointed from the government, the villagers close to the affected site had decided to do it by their own. He said that the road was most important one which connected lower part of Chitral with the upper one and onward led to Gilgit-Baltistan via Shandur Pass and Wakhan corridors of Afghanistan but the government did not pay heed to it. The road had been nicknamed as ‘Ghulam Mohammad Bypass Road’ after the local MPA Ghulam Mohammad failed to get it rehabilitated in four years of his tenure.–Zahiruddin]]>