LANDI KOTAL: Educated youth from Bara tehsil have demanded of the Khyber Agency political administration to relocate Dogra Polytechnic College back to Bara from Jamrud.

Representatives of Khyber Students Union said that the repair of the damaged building of the college had been completed and a large number of students from different localities were now eager to get admissions in the institution, if shifted back to Bara.

They said that the institution was shut down in Sept 2009 when a military operation was started in Bara against militants.

Sadeeq Afridi, a spokesman for KSU, told this scribe that initially the institute was shifted to a private college on Ring Road in Peshawar and then to the Management Science College in Jamrud, much to the disappointment of majority of its students hailing from Bara.

“The number of students from Bara has now dropped to 13 only while most of Jamrud students are enrolled in technical institutions of Peshawar,” he remarked.

Mr Afridi demanded of the Khyber Agency political administration and Fata Secretariat to immediately shift the polytechnic college from Jamrud back to its original location in Dogra.

Meanwhile, elders of Akkakhel tribe threatened to stop construction of Shahid Khan Afridi cricket stadium in their area if the political administration failed to release the compensation amount to the landowners.

The Akkakhel elders said that the political administration had signed a written agreement with the tribesmen belonging to Dray Kandi sub-tribe to pay Rs500,000 per kanal for their land acquired for the stadium.

Akkakhel elders Meena Gul, Mawaz Khan and Suhail Ahmad said that the political administration was using delaying tactics as they had approached them a number of times for timely payment of compensation.

They said that the land was a collective property of a number of Dray Kandi families who had limited sources of income and were thus awaiting compensation.

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2017