CHITRAL NEWS 

ISLAMABAD: As the people of Chitral are facing miseries with the closure of the only land route to their valley due to snow on the Lowari Pass, the government has made their woes even more compounded by falsely claiming that the newly-constructed tunnel has been opened for traffic.

About 250 vehicles carrying Chitralis going to their villages for celebrating Eidul Azha remained struck at the southern side of the Lowari Tunnel in Dir for about ten hours day before the Eid.

The first convoy of vehicles reached near the tunnel at about 8am only to find that the tunnel was shut.

As the day passed, vehicle after vehicle continued pulling up at the tunnel site and passengers including women, children and elderly pleading the NHA staff to let them pass through the tunnel as the pass had been closed due to fresh snowfall.

 However, the passengers numbering in thousands were meted out humiliating treatment at the hands of two lowly Korean workers calling the shots there and there was no sign of any responsible NHA presence there. The Koreans apparently briefed by the NHA authorities were rude and completely indifferent to the sufferings of the travelers. The passengers tried to contact their elected representatives and officials of the National Highway Authority to get relief but all of them were inaccessible. (It may be noted that despite a mobile tower setup existing at the tunnel it has been deactivated to deny passengers access to outside world when stuck up at the tunnel.)

The Koreans were demanding an officer of the Chitral Scouts  give them security guarantee in writing which the Chitral Scouts refused.

When the passengers tried to persuade the staff present  at the tunnel that the federal minister for communications Arbab Alamgir Khan and Governor NWFP Owais Ahmed Ghani had announced that the tunnel would be opened for the Chitralis for at least two hours daily, the staff curtly replied that they had not received any directive from the authorities and would not open the tunnel unless they got such orders in writing.

It may be recalled that political leaders of Chitral including minister Saleem Khan, MPA Ghulam Mohammad and the district nazim Maghfirat Shah have been claiming that the tunnel would be opened for the passengers after the closure of the Lowari Pass.

The president of the ruling PPP, Mr Zainul Abedin, in a press statement issued from Islamabad even went a step further and warned other political leaders of the district not to claim credit for the opening the tunnel and said it was the PPP government which had taken the step for the welfare of the Chitralis. He said the federal minister for communication had declared the opening of the tunnel at a seminar in Islamabad but after that every political leader was trying to take credit for such a historic decision. Besides, the NWFP minister and the MPA from upper Chitral met the governor and declared that on their request the governor had issued directives to the authorities concerned to open the tunnel for two hours daily. However, when Chitralis are being humiliated at the tunnel every day, there is none of the leaders who comes to their rescue.

From early in the morning to 10pm, these Chitralis dreaming to celebrate Eid with their near and dear ones saw inhuman treatment at the hands of the low grade tunnel workers. One of the passengers said he had a dream of passing through the tunnel but it was shattered after he found that a facility meant for the stranded people of Chitral was being denied to them in the name of fake security concern. He said during his 50 years of travelling to and from Chitral he had never seen such type of humiliation and agony.

He regretted that when the only land route connecting Chitral with the outside world has been closed, the so-called democratic government remains indifferent to the sufferings of the people and is neither making arrangements to open the Kunar road nor allowing them to use the tunnel even for a few hours. It is strange that everything is being used to punish the masses in the name of security.

The passengers said the so called Chitrali political leaders should be ashamed of their apathy towards the sufferings and miseries of the people. If they are not able to get the tunnel open for a few hours, they do not deserve to be called people's representatives. Had there been a sincere political leader, he should have been the first to reach the site leading a convoy of passengers and open the tunnel for them. Today, when the passengers are suffering a lot, these leaders have gone underground to avoid public wrath, they added.

The passengers lamented that with such kind of display of lack of credibility, how can we Chitralis trust the government on anything, even if we want to? --(Jehangir Khan)