KARAK: A committee comprising elders of the 16 villages located in the Nashpa block, an oil and gas exploration area here, has demanded provision of basic amenities to the hamlets.

The demand was made at a meeting here on Tuesday chaired by its president Gulzar Khan Khattak.

The participants said the OGDCL had been paying nominal rents for carrying out exploration activities on their lands.

They pointed out that oil and gas exploration company, MOL, had been paying higher rents to landowners in Thal block, besides providing scholarships to students, but the OGDCL had not offered a single scholarship to the talented students of the Nashpa block.

They said the villages were educationally backward due to absence of educational institutions and the students had to move to other districts for higher education.

They demanded that OGDCL approve a college for the areas to bring them at a par with the developed areas of the district.

The elders said there was no middle and high school for girls in the region.

The participants also demanded construction of link roads to connect the underdeveloped hilly areas with the district headquarters to provide better transportation facilities to residents.

The participants complained that the oil and gas exploration activities had posed serious health hazards to local population, therefore, plantation on a large scale was needed to neutralise the dangerous affects of gases emitting from the dehydration plant.

SCHEME OF STUDIES: The board of studies (BoS) of the English department of Khushal Khan Khattak University Karak (KKKUK) on Tuesday approved the scheme of studies.

The decision was made at the first ever meeting of the board at the varsity’s highway campus here.

The meeting expressed satisfaction over the scheme of studies prepared by the department of English and accorded approval to the bachelor of studies (BS) programmes with slight amendments.

The meeting appreciated the vision of the faculty members of the department for preparing the courses according to the needs of the day.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2016