Govt help sought in opening roads in upper Chitral

By Zar Alam Khan

ISLAMABAD: Though the residents of upper Chitral are happy with the unprecedented snowfall this winter, life in the area remains at a standstill due to blockade of roads and disruption in other communication system.

Like other parts of the district, people in the Yarkhun, Mastuj and Laspur valleys do subsistence farming and the productivity of their crops mostly depends on availability of water in small streams. If there is no sufficient snowfall in the winter, the streams dry up in the beginning of the summer and the crops fail leading to shortage of food items. 

The stranded people while talking to this correspondent said with the start of the new year, Yarkhun, Laspur and Mastuj valleys received about 14 to 28 inches of snow. However, they said they were stranded and unable to walk and travel even from one village to the other. “Livestock is confined to our sheds and we have to remove the snow to take them to the river for watering,” they said.
“As many as 56,000 people of Yarkhun, Laspur and Mastuj are stranded in their houses and villages because of heavy snowfall and glaciers fallen on roads,” said Liaquat Ali, who heads the Qurumber and Shandur Area Development Organisation (Qasado), an umbrella organisation of the residents of Yarkhun, Mastuj and Laspur valley.

He said for the first time the village organisations removed snowfall from the roads. However, he added, the continued snowfall made it difficult for the community to keep the roads open.

Mr Liaquat said the village organisations of Brep, Khuzh, Kargin, Chapari and Chuinj had removed snow and glaciers from the 30-km portion of the main Yarkhun road and connected eight villages to Mastuj and onward to Booni and Chitral town. He said the jeep tracks to Laspur and from Brep to Yarkhun Lasht had been blocked by avalanches and glaciers which could only be removed by the bulldozers available with the district government. 

He said the people of the Mastuj, Yarkhun and Laspur valleys would have been blocked and disconnected from Booni and Chitral had Qasado not constructed the Kruideri link road and jeepable bridge over the river Yarkhun in 2005-06. This road from Mastuj to Parwak is now called Ithehad (unity) Road and the bridge has been named as Qasado bridge.

He said Qasado maintained this link road and bridge till 2008-09 when the District Communication and Works (C&W) Department provided fund and constructed the bridge in collaboration with the civil society organisation.
Mr Liaquat requested the district administration to send bulldozers to the area for removing glaciers and connect the small valleys to the main town of Chitral.