CHITRAL: District nazim Maghfi rat Shah has said that a donor conference will be held soon in Islamabad jointly by the district government, provincial government and Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) to raise funds for the rehabilitation of infrastructure devastated by fl ash floods in Chitral in 2015.

After his meeting with PPAF general manager Tahir Malik in Islamabad on Wednesday Mr Shah told this scribe by phone that the district needed Rs18 billion to restore the damaged roads, bridges, irrigation channels, drinking water schemes, school buildings and hospitals across the district.

He said that a multi-sector development project was the need of the hour to restore the facilities, but arrangement of funds was the main obstacle and holding of the donor conference would make the task possible.

Mr Shah said that the PPAF chief had recently visited Chitral to get first-hand knowledge of the losses.

Meanwhile, All Government Contractors Association, Chitral, president Miraj Hussain demanded of the government to release funds for the ongoing development schemes being executed by the public works department in Chitral to ensure their completion.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, he said that the provincial government’s finance department had not released funds for the last one year for the development projects.

He said that over 100 projects had been started during the last one year, but only Rs2 million were released against the needed funds of over Rs200 million.

He said that most of the contractors had either completed their projects or these were near completion without drawing a single penny from the respective departments.

Mr Hussain alleged that the finance department had been releasing funds to the native districts of the chief minister (Nowshera) and finance minister (Lower Dir), while rest of the districts were being ignored.

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2016