MANSEHRA: The apex committee formed by the Supreme Court has warned that if the federal government doesn’t develop the New Balakot City housing project at the 140,000 kanals of land designated for it, a petition will be filed with the court for contempt proceedings.

“The Supreme Court had asked the federal government in January this year to release Rs1 billion without delay for the New Balakot City and complete work on it within 30 months but the government hasn’t released that amount and instead, it wants to hand over the project to private firms in violation of the court’s orders. This is unacceptable to me,” apex committee member and lawyer Munir Hussain Lughmani told reporters here on Wednesday.

Chairing a meeting on the New Balakot City housing project on Monday, Prime Minister Imran Khan had announced the establishment of a tourism zone at the housing project’s land on the public-private partnership basis.

Lawyer regrets quake survivors living miserable life since 2005

The New Balakot City housing project is meant for the settlement of the survivors of the 2005 earthquake.

Mr Lughmani, who is also a former president of the district bar association, said the earthquake’s survivors from Balakot Red Zone had long been living a miserable life in small prefabricated houses but the federal government instead of ensuring the early completion of the project had planned to take away the land selected for the project.

He said the groundbreaking was performed for the Rs13 billion housing initiative in 2007 but work on it hadn’t been completed since then.

Another member of the apex committee, Shiraz Mehmood Qureshi, said he had moved the Supreme Court to seek action over corruption in international donations made for the rehabilitation of earthquake survivors in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

He said it was unfortunate that work on the project hadn’t been launched months after the Supreme Court issued an order for it.

BOY KILLED: A three-year-old boy was run over and killed by a truck in Bisian area of Balakot on Wednesday.

The truck hit Mohammad Liaqat when he was crossing a road with his mother.

The boy’s family pardoned the driver, who took the injured to the hospital.

Also in the day, a van overturned in Mudsarian area injuring many schoolchildren.

The accident occurred as the van bound for Pulrah from Mudsarian overtook another vehicle.

The injured were shifted to the Pulrah Civil Hospital, whose doctors referred eight of them to the King Abdullah Teaching Hospital due to critical injuries.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2019