CHITRAL: The people of Golen valley have asked the Wapda to redesign the route of the valley road up to the intake point of the Golen Gol hydropower station’s channel before its reconstruction.

The road had been swept away by floods in July last year.

Through a resolution passed during a meeting here on Tuesday, the local residents said a one kilometre stretch of the road had been washed away by floods thrice within the last four years, but its alignment remained unchanged.

They said the locals had requested the high-ups of Wapda, the custodian of the road, to make the road disaster-resilient so it could remain intact even in the event of glacial lake outburst floods (Glof).

They said due to damage to the road the valley remained cut off from rest of the district for more than a month last year.

They said the vulnerable stretch of the road passed through a stream which was the path of floods.

They pointed out that large sums of money were spent on restoration of the road, but each time it was washed away by floods.

They regretted that this time tool the Wapda engineers were repeating the same mistake.

Ali Khan, a resident of the valley, said a German consultant of Golen Gol project had resigned from his job over the faulty design of the road and the intake point of the channel in October 2016, when Wapda, the project’s executing agency, did not comply with his advice.

He said the apprehensions of the consultant came true as both the intake point of the power channel and the road were swept away by Glof a few months after the power house was commissioned to work in 2018.

But strangely, the organisation did not change the position of the structure of the intake point which has its origin right in the middle of the stream.

He said meteorologists had predicted a string of Glof this summer as the glacial lakes in the highlands of the valley were at the point of explosion with rise in temperature.

Lower Dir deputy commissioner Hasan Abid said he was in favour of changing the road route to protect it from impending Glof. He said he would approach the authorities in that regard.

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2021