LANDI KOTAL (Khyber Agency), Nov 21: Hundreds of tribesmen on Monday staged a demonstration on Shalobar Road in protest against the construction of a wall around the Hayatabad residential township. They marched alongside the controversial wall and later converged on Shah Kas Chowk.

Elders of the Afridi tribe and leaders of political parties issued an ultimatum to the authorities and threatened to demolish the boundary wall if gates were not constructed at convenient places along the site by Nov 27.

By constructing the boundary wall, they said, the Peshawar city government had trespassed on Shalobar territory.

They demanded that the wall be constructed within limits of the city government alongside the barbed wire fence which was erected a few years back.

City government officials said the township’s security was threatened by infiltration of criminal elements into Hayatabad from the tribal area. The Khyber Agency administration has deployed dozens of khasadars along the Shalobar Road to avoid any untoward incident.

The Afridi elders said that the construction of a boundary wall would badly affect students, patients and daily wage-earners living in the adjacent tribal area. A Shalobar elder Haji Ekhtiar Gul said the provincial government’s decision smacked of “discrimination against the tribals”.

Mr Gul claimed that tribesmen had sold their lands to the then Peshawar Development Authority for the establishment of Hayatabad township at throwaway prices and now the same areas had been declared out of bounds for them.