Report Ejaz Ahmed
BOONI: The much delayed notification to create the new district of upper Chitral will be issued within a week.
This was stated by PTI candidate for PK-1 Israr Uddin Saboor while talking to ChitralToday on phone on Thursday.
He said the announcement to create the new district of upper Chitral had been made by the PTI government on the longstanding demand of the area people but it could not be implemented due to a ban on changes to revenue limits of districts across the country by the Election Commission before delimitation of constituencies last year.
“Now there are 80 per cent chances that the notification will be issued next week,” he added.
On Nov 8, 2017, then Chief Minister Pervez Khattak at a public gathering in Chitral in the presence of Imran Khan had announced the decision of his government to create the new district of Upper Chitral with Booni as its headquarters.
A few months before that Mr Khan had promised in upper Chitral that he would press the chief minister to consider the feasibility of bifurcating Chitral into two districts.
But the PTI government failed to issue the notification of the new district let alone allocate funds amounting to about Rs15 billion to put in place the needed staff and infrastructure for the new district to start functioning.
The caretaker government is mandated just to run day to day affairs of the province and hold the elections. Even if it issues a notification to provide a face saving to the PTI candidates before the elections the implementation of the decision to put a new district in place will not be possible in the near future.
The announcement of Upper Chitral as a new district was made by former Chief Minister Pervaiz Khatak on November 8, 2017. The notification was delayed till 22 December 2017 when election commission banned on changes to revenue limits of districts across the country. There was ample of time available for PTI government to issue the notification from 8 November to 22 December 2017, but it did not.
Now there is a caretaker government, whose main responsibility is to carryout the day to day and normal business of the government. Whether this government is empowered to issue the notification or not we don’t know…Actually PTI now realizes the mistake it had done and tries to repair the damage.