01 August 2004	Sunday	14 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

ISLAMABAD, July 31: The people of Chitral have widely hailed the government's decision to approve the relaunch of the abandoned Lowari tunnel project after nearly 30 years , saying it will usher in a new era of prosperity and progress for the area.

MNA Maulana Akbar Chitrali termed the decision a historic one for the over 400,000 people of Chitral for whom, he said, the issue had become a matter of life and death.

He said the project had been neglected by the previous governments but President Gen Pervez Musharraf and the present government took practical steps and allocated funds for the project.

Talking to Dawn on telephone from Chitral, people belonging to various walks of life said President Musharraf had fulfilled his promise made with the people of Chitral at Shandur in 2001 to relaunch the project for providing an all-weather route to the valley. They also praised NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah for taking personal interest in the matter.

The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) among other projects on Tuesday approved the Lowari tunnel and Access Roads project at a cost of Rs7.983 billion.

It has been a longstanding demand of the people of Chitral to the successive governments to construct an all-weather road to the valley. The valley remains cut off from rest of the country in winter due to snow on the Lowari Pass.

In early 1970s, the PPP government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had for the first time sanctioned the Lowari tunnel project, work on which was started in 1975 from the Gujar post in upper Dir at an elevation of 7,880 feet.

During 1976-77, the Frontier Works Organization had completed about 2,000-foot of digging work on the tunnel from the southern side in collaboration with the Lowari Tunnel Organization. However, the project was later abandoned and put into the cold storage.

With the passage of time, the estimated cost of the project has been going up. In 1994, the National Assembly was informed that the cost - according to the National Highway Authority's estimate - had reached a three- billion-rupee mark from Rs500 million in 1975.