CHITRAL: “The nearer the church, the farther from God” is the best dictum to portray the appalling condition in Chitral town where disaster-hit infrastructures of bridges, roads and irrigation channels, water supply schemes are yet to be rehabilitated in the villages flanking the district headquarters for the three years.

The pedestrian bridge over Chitral Gol stream adjacent to the deputy commissioner office, washed away in July 2015 by the flash flood, has not been reconstructed as a result of which the passersby pay Rs10 to the owner of a cable car to cross the stream.

Bashir Hussain Azad, a social worker of Goldur village, told Dawn that more than 1,000 people crossed over the bridge on daily basis that connected Goldur, Chew Dok and Rehan Kot with the western side of the city where women and children hospital, girls’ schools and college were situated.

He said that both the district nazim and deputy commissioner passed through the road and glanced at the women, children and other people crossing the stream by cable car, run by an individual.

“It is a matter of shame both for the district government and non-governmental organisations in the district to ignore construction of a bridge situated on such a crucial place,” said Mr Azad.

He said that district government was running a European Union-funded project Community Driven Local Development (CDLD) in Chitral but it failed to spend half a million rupees on the pedestrian bridge at Goldur.

Mr Azad said that it was burden on the pockets of hundreds of parents of Goldur, Rehankot and Chew Doke areas whose children attended schools and colleges on the other side of the stream.

He said that for the poor students, the daily charges of cable car were more than their pocket money. He said that women and children of the three villages also faced the same ordeal to reach the hospital.

District nazim Maghfirat Shah, when contacted, said that provincial government was responsible for the mess. He said that district nazims had no financial powers.

He said that government did not fulfil its promise of empowering the district governments but made them subservient to deputy commissioners as a result issues at grassroots level remained unaddressed.

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2017