CHITRAL, April 25: The residents of Yarkhun valley have demanded of the corps commander of Peshawar and the chief minister to take stern notice of the large scale bungling in the funds of Darband to Boroghil Pass road.
Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, former tehsil nazim Shahzada Sikandarul Mulk, Umar Rafi, Mukhtar Ali Khan, Israr Ahmed and others alleged that seventy million rupees were embezzled in the construction of the road which had strategic importance as well.
They said that on their demand the corps commander had ordered to reconstruct the road during his visit to the border area and got approved a sum of seventy million rupees by the provincial government in August last. They reiterated that all the work done by the contractor was that it cleared some debris from the existing road with the help of two bulldozers which worked for three months and whole of the large amount was released to him.
The locals complained that the contractor has thrown the debris into the nearby fields of crops inflicting loss to the farmers for which no compensation was paid to them. They added that the work did not involve land compensation as the road has not been widened.
The 90-km-long jeep track from Zhupoo village to Yarkhun Lasht was built about 20 years back when the now disbanded Chitral Area Development Project (CADP) provided funds and the residents donated land.
Located in the extreme north-east of Chitral, Broghil valley borders with Afghanistan in the west and China in the north-east. Except during the tenure of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto when food and fodder for the cattle-keeping inhabitants of the remote valley were airdropped, successive governments have ignored the area.
The intensity of Boroghil’s backwardness can be judged from the fact that its first primary school was opened only a few years back.
It may be recalled that in July 2011 militants intruded into Chitral from the Nooristan province of Afghanistan and killed over 40 personnel of Chitral Scouts.
Soon after the incident, Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvaiz Kayani visited the border areas in Chitral. During his visit to Broghil valley, the army chief was reported to have expressed serious reservation over the inaccessibility of the area due to absence of road and telecommunication facilities.–Zahiruddin
Dear Mohammad Khan Sb
You are right to complain against the dumb and deaf contestants who have been doing nothing for the people of upper Chitral and only filled their pockets and committed lots of corruption. Poor people of upper Chitral are still facing many problems because of these corrupt leaders. The people of upper Chitral should teach a lesson to these corrupt politicians once and for all.
Why these so-called sympathizers of Yarkhun valley have become so active regarding the embezzlement of funds in the road project. I think they did not get their share in the theft and are using it when the elections are nearing. The people of upper Chitral should reject all those who did nothing before, misused the funds and are now contesting elections again.