MANSEHRA: Residents of Upper Kohistan district on Saturday took to the streets and blocked the Karakoram Highway for many hours against shortage of drinking water in Kamila city and its suburbs.

The protesters shouted slogans against the chief engineer of the public health department and district administration.

Maulana Waliullah Tohidi, who led protesters in the Kamila Bazaar, said the Gravity Water Flow Scheme, which supplies drinking water to people in Kamila city and its suburbs, was washed away by the flash floods three months ago but it hadn’t been rehabilitated yet causing a water shortage.

He said water was a basic human need, so it should be provided to the people.

Mr Waliullah warned that if the public health department didn’t restore water supply, the residents would block the Karakoram Highway indefinitely.

The people travelling within the district and between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan, remained stranded for many hours due to the road blockade.

FLOUR SALE: The district administration has begun the sale of wheat flour across Torghar at subsidised rate on the government’s orders.

Deputy commissioner Anwar Zeb Khan told reporters on Saturday that flour was sold on trucks with the assistant commissioners and food officials monitoring the exercise.

He said the people could complain to him if subsidised flour wasn’t supplied to them.

The DC said the administration would ensure provision of flour of good quality and right quality to the residents.

Meanwhile, president of the Oghi Traders Association Sarbuland Khan has warned millers against hampering smooth supply of subsidised wheat flour to people in the tehsil.

In a statement, Mr Khan said the food department had fixed subsidised flour quota for the tehsil but millers didn’t follow it.

SENTENCED: A Torghar court on Saturday awarded life imprisonment to a man for killing his former fiancee and her husband in 2009.

District and sessions judge Shahnaz Habib Khattak, who works from Oghi tehsil in Mansehra, also fined convict Rashid Taj Rs300,000 to be given away to legal heirs of the couple.

Meanwhile, lawyers boycotted court proceedings in upper parts of Hazara division against the murder of KP Bar Council member Razaullah Khan.

Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2022