Affectees from Muzgol being forced to leave Qaqlasht

Report SN Peerzada
BOONI, July 26: Hundreds of people displaced by flash floods in Muzgol have taken shelter on the Qaqlasht plateau in front of Booni but the local administration is not ready to provide them relief goods and pressurizing them to go back.
But the affected people are adamant at staying in Qaqlasht, saying they cannot take the risk of going back as their lives would be at danger due to the possibility of more floods. They said the local administration should provide them relief items at Qaqlasht till the situation normalizes.
But the administration officials were of the view that relief assistance cannot be provided to the displaced people at more than one place. They said the affectees should go back to Muzgol where they could be accommodated at a safer place and provided with daily-use commodities.
Late on Sunday evening, MPA Sardar Hussain along with some army officers reached the area and tried to pacify the displaced people but they refused to go back. As a result, the MPA returned promising that arrangements would be made to provide them tents and other relief items. Talking to ChitralToday, some of the displaced people said the PTI-led provincial government had planned a housing scheme in Qaqlasht to distribute the land among its supporters and leaders on throwaway prices. This is the reason the indigenous and displaced people are being turned away from the area so that there is no hindrance to launch the project. The people said Qaqlasht is their grazing ground and had already been distributed among the people of Mulkhow and Booni.
They said the local people would not allow the government to snatch the grazing ground from them to launch a housing scheme and accommodate their own favourites from different parts of the province here. They said the government had no right to force the flood-affected people not to live in the grazing ground.
In the meantime, the people of Booni have expressed their anger and concerns on the apathy of the government to provide relief to the displaced people and its failure to restore the damaged road to upper Chitral which is facing a crisis. They also expressed their resolve to stand against the proposed housing project at Qaqlasht.
“For over 15 days the administration has miserably failed to provide even a single rupee relief item to the flood affectees. Now the government is even not ready to see the flood victims of Muzgol take shelter at their own grazing ground. The flood victims are rotting at Qaqlasht and the administration has been unable,” said an office-bearer of Tehreek Huqooq-e-Awam. He said the people of the area would launch such an effective and aggressive protest move that would rock the whole country.

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