Murdan Link road washed away, needs repair

 

Chitral -- A link road connecting 13 big and small villages of the famous Murdan valley of Garm Chashma Chitral, has been washed away by the recent floods. The valley has been blocked for all kinds of vehicular traffic for the last more than one month. There is no way of supplies reaching the valley. Patients suffering from serious and fatal diseases have no choice but to lament their fate and die without treatment. This scribe found scores of man and women cursing their elected leaders and non elected cronies for their woes and sufferings. The road was completely washed away at Droshp in the devastating floods of last year. Big rocks, stones and debris of floods piled up resulting in the rise of river level to dangerous proportions which not only washed away the only road of the valley but also poses a serious threat to the historic Droshp fort and the houses of the poor residents of the village. A poor woman of the village along with her 11 year old son trying hard with big rocks to divert the direction of the river and save her mud house fell into the feet of this scribe and pleaded with tears to do something to save her house and the village.

The residents of the valley had reopened the road on self help basis last year though hundreds of thousands of rupees were allocated and pocketed by the cronies of the elected representatives in the name of repair of the road. This time the provincial Minister of Population Welfare hailing from Garam Chasma valley has given the good news of allocating Rs 700000 for early restoration of the road but the money is again likely to be embezzled by the cronies as they have already opened their mouth wide for the prey and been chosen as project leaders. One of the project leaders has already indicated that the allocated money is not sufficient to hire an excavator and big rocks and thousands of tons of debris will be removed manually by laborers. This clearly shows his intention as to what he will do with the public money.

The residents of the valley have demanded that the allocated money be given in the disposal of cluster level community organization for effective and transparent use instead of one person pocketing it.

This is to be noted that the said community organization has a track record of completing 3 link roads, 4 mega water supply schemes, 2 micro-hdro powers and one irrigation channel on self help basis and in partnership with none governmental organizations while the cronies under the garb of project leaders have always pocketed the public money. -- Sultan Mehmood, Murdan Garm Chashma 24 May 2011.