TIMERGARA: Local leaders on Wednesday asked their respective parties’ workers to make collective efforts for serving communities irrespective of political affiliations.

They expressed these views while addressing a function at Talash on completion of work on Shamshi Khan Talash feeder from Saddo grid station.

The 15-kilometre-long line was completed at a cost of Rs18.87 million.

PPP’s former senator Ahmad Hassan Khan, JI’s former provincial minister Muzafar Syed Advocate, former provincial minister Mehmood Zeb Khan, JUI-F’s Mufti Irfanuddin, PML-N’s Inayat ur Rehman and others spoke on the occasion.

The speakers lauded the efforts of local youth and political activists for working alongside the Pesco construction unit to complete the project. They said political activists had not only taken part in the manual work but also collected Rs500,000 to hire an excavator for erecting electricity poles in the hilly areas.

They said completion of the feeder was an example of public-private partnership.

They asked the participants to take active part in the process of development as the governments alone could not do so.

Several villages of Talash valley would benefit from the new feeder as the existing Talash Express feeder from the Chakdara grid station was overloaded.

Also in the day, political and social activists and lawyers rejected the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP) and the Drug Act, 2019, and announced to fully support the lawyers’ ongoing protest against the changes.

They announced the decision at a multiparty conference organised by the District Bar Timergara at Balambat.

The speakers, including PTI MPA Humayun Khan, ANP MPA Haji Bahadar Khan, former lawmakers Muzafar Syed, Mehmood Zeb Khan, Bakht Baidar Khan, Izazul Mulk Afkari and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council member Hazrat Rehman, termed the amended CCP and Drug Act, 2019 as a big hurdle in provision of speedy and cheap justice to litigants. They demanded of the government to immediately revoke the amendments.

STRAY DOGS BITE PEOPLE: Stray dogs bit several residents of Talash on Wednesday, who were hospitalised.

The local people said most of the victims were from Narai Shah, Kalpani and Khan Serai villages.

Deputy commissioner Saadat Hassan directed the Timergara tehsil municipal officer and medical superintendent of the local hospital to provide quality medical care to the dog bite victims.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2020