UPPER DIR: People of remote Kohistan valley and tehsil Sheringal threatened of the protest against slowest progress of work on under-construction road from Chukaitan to Sheringal and said they would block the main Dir-Peshawar road for traffic if work was not expedited soon.
The work had been started on the road in 2010 and it had to be completed in 30-month but after passage of almost six years the work on the road was still not completed, the people said. They complained that the contractors were deliberately delaying the work.
Tehsil Councilor from Sheringal union council, Malik Shakirullah, District Councilor, Malik Inayat Said, Rashid Khan, Mujeeb ur Rehman, Muhammad Sher and others said that the Pakhtunkhwa Highway Authority was also backing the contractors as it had turned blind eye towards this project.
They alleged that the Jamaat-e-Islami MNA and MPAs were also supporting the contractors over delaying work on road. They said that no one was hearing their voice because they had taken up the matter with elected representatives of the area,
PKHA’s authorities and district administration were informed about the delay in the project several times but no one had resolved this issue. They said that the MNA, Sahibzada Tariqullah and director PKHA had promised them to complete the project by June, 30, this year however they could not fulfill their promise. The residents of Sheirngal and Kohistan valley said that they were facing lots of problems owing to not completion of the road. Because, they added, the distance of 35-kilometer from Sheringal to Dir took almost two hours due to the worst and dilapidated condition of old road. The residents said that patients are worst sufferers of the delay in the completion of road as their pain multiply due to travel on the road when they shifted to Dir or other places from Sheringal.