KP govt adding to miseries of calamity-hit Chitralis

CHITRAL: KP govt adding to miseries of calamity-hit Chitralis.

This was stated by former bureaucrat and PPP Chitral leader Sultan Wazir Khan at a press conference here on Wednesday. Party leaders, including Alamzeb Advocate, Qazi Sajjad, Syed Burhan Shah, Qazi Faisal, Hameedul Jalal, Qazi Waqar, Abdul Hussain and Abdul Razzaq Baramush, were also present. Mr Wazir said getting compensation for damages caused by floods and earthquake was the basic right of every citizen.

However, due to the incompetency and criminal negligence of the Chitral administration the poor people still remained deprived of this basic bright. So far, the affected people have neither received any compensation nor the government has started rehabilitation work on the damaged infrastructures, including roads, bridges and irrigation channels.

He said during his vast to Chitral, PPP leader Syed Khursheed Shah had announced Rs50 million and later got the amount released from the Sindh government but the deputy commissioner Chitral still did not utilize the money, depriving the people of this benefit too. He said the federal government also failed to even issue a notification to waive agricultural loans as announced by the prime minister even after six months.

As a result, the bank officials were harassing the affected people and getting FIRs registered against them. Mr Wazir assailed the government for extending the Customs Act to the Malakand division and demanded its immediate withdrawal. The PPP leader said despite the availability of funds, the chief minister, Pervez Khattak, was deliberately delaying the start of work on the construction of Torkhow road which showed his anti-people attitude.

He also ridiculed the local government system introduced by the PTI government in KP and said on the one hand the PTI has been claiming to devolve powers to the grassroots level but on the other it was not ready to allocate funds to the local governments. He also condemned the provincial government for keeping the whole upper Chitral in darkness since July 2015 by not initiating the reconstruction of the Reshun powerhouse which was destroyed in the floods.

He said the local people were forced to purchase solar panels by selling their cattle due to the callous attitude of the government.– Reporting by Bashir Hussain Azad