Maghfirat Shah keeping road repair funds since Aug: MPA

Addressing a press conference at Peshawar Press Club along with leaders of the PPP Peshawar, Salim Khan said an amount of Rs160 million had been released by the KP government in August last year for the reconstruction of the damaged roads to Mastuj, Garam Chashma and Kalash valleys but the district nazim, Maghfirate Shah, was still not ready to release the sanctioned amount from the account of the district council. As a result, he added, the reconstruction work on the damaged roads could not be initiated and people of the valleys were facing a great deal of hardship and forced to travel on foot. The MPA also said the Reshun powerhouse, which provided electricity to the consumers in parts of lower and whole of upper Chitral, was damaged in the July 2015 floods but the government was yet to release funds for its reconstruction. He said due to the no-reconstruction of the Kalash valley roads, tourists were facing problems in reaching the area, depriving the locals of their right to earn their livelihood from the tourism sector. He said the valley of Garam Chashma still remained cut-off and the local people faced loss of millions of rupees as their main cash crop, potatoes, could not reach the market. He said during their visit to Chitral in the aftermath of the two calamities last year, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Chief Minister Pervez Khattak and PTI chief Imran Khan had promised that all the damaged infrastructures would be reconstructed within a year. However, even after the passage of about 10 months, work on the reconstruction of the roads, bridges and water channels could not be started. Besides, the displaced people are still forced to live under the open sky. The prime minister’s announcement to waive small agricultural loans of the people of Chitral also could not be implemented and bank officials are now harassing the loan takers. The MPA said the severely affected people of Chitral had been holding protests and staging sit-ins and many of the residents of Drosh even tried to migrate to Afghanistan in protest but the authorities concerned never moved an inch and downplayed their demands and kept them on empty promises. He warned that if the government, both federal and provincial, continued ignoring the flood and earthquake-devastated people of Chitral, a protest long march would be taken out form Chitral to stage sit-ins outside the KP assembly in Peshawar and the parliament house in Islamabad.– With reporting by Nadir Khawaja]]>