Meeting warns govt on housing project, anti-encroachment drive

One of the office-bearers of the Tehreek told ChitralToday that the three issues were: harassment of flood-affected people in the name of anti-encroachment drive by the local administration, KP government’s plan to launch a controversial housing scheme at Qaqlasht and non-implementation of the prime minister’s announcement to waive agricultural loans of the people of Chitral. He said flooding in the Yarkhun river had washed away a number of houses in the Junalikoch village during the last two years. The government failed to rehabilitate the displaced people and as a result they established their temporary houses along the Chitral-Mastuj road in Junalikoch. Now on the direction of Assistant Commissioner Mastuj at Booni, Hamidullah Khan, the local administration has marked the houses of the poor people as encroachment and plans to demolish them. “This is an open injustice and travesty of the law. The government should first fulfill its obligations and rehabilitate the displaced people and then go after the encroachers. How the local administration can declare these flood-displaced people as encroachers when they have no place to take shelter in. If you demolish the sheters of these displaced people, where they will go in this biting cold weather?” He said the participants of the meeting were of the view that the local administration’s plan to remove encroachments was commendable but there should a difference between an encroacher and a displaced person taking shelter in a barren land. About the Qaqlasht housing scheme, the meeting stated that the people of three tehsils of upper Chitral had already warned the provincial government not to even think of launching any housing project in the area for people belonging to different parts of the country. He said under the pressure of the local people, the provincial government had sidelined the plan but a few days ago a delegation of PTI local leaders led by Rehmat Ghazi and MPA Fozia Bibi met the chief minister Pervez Khattak in Peshawar and again took up the matter after which Mr Khattak sought a report. The Tehreek members and other participants of the meeting once again warned that no housing project would be allowed in Qaqlasht and if the government tried to start the work by force, the local leaders of the PTI would be held responsible for its consequences. About the agricultural loans, the participants demanded that the elected representatives of Chitral should take up the matter with the federal government to order the State Bank to issue a notification waiving loans the people of the district took from different banks. The two natural disasters brought devastation to the valley and the people were not able even manage their day-to-day expenses. In such a situation, how they can pay back the loans. When a military operation was launched in Swat, the federal government waivedloans in Malakand division and the benefit was given to Chitral too which was not that much affected at that time. Now when Chitral has been declared a calamity-hit district, officials of different private banks are harassing farmers to return their loans. In this situation, the meeting demanded that the government should resolve the matter and issue a notification to waive the loans.