MANSEHRA: Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad road, which links Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with Gilgit-Baltistan, was cleared to all sorts of traffic up to Naran on Sunday.

The road was blocked in November last year when Kaghan valley received heavy snowfall. National Highway Authority, which had started clearing snow from that main artery last month, removed all glaciers from the road and cleared it to traffic.

“The NHA would take some two to three weeks to clear this artery up to Babusar Top, restoring the traffic between KP and GP,” Hassan Deen, the chairman of Hoteliers Association in Kaghan, told journalists.

He said that traders and hoteliers would welcome tourists to Kaghan on Eidul Fitr. He said that as the artery was cleared to traffic, the police post in Naran was also made operational by DPO Zahoor Babar Afridi.

With the reopening of MNJ road, the first digital census will be started in Kaghan valley.

BAKERS: The bakers on Sunday announced not to pay the re-gasified liquefied natural gas price to Sui Northern Gas Pipelines.

“We are being supplied with natural gas and SNGPL wants us to pay the price of RLNG, which is unjust and unacceptable to us at any cost,” Wajid Shah, the president of District Bakers Association, told a press conference.

Flanked by other office-bearers of the association and their counsel Advocate Najmul Hassan Khan, he said that SNGP supplied natural gas to domestic and commercial consumers across the province but it wanted to receive the traffic, which it had fixed for RLNG.

Speaking on occasion, Najmul Hassan Khan said that bakers had moved Peshawar High Courts’ Abbottabad Circuit Bench against that injustice and April 13 was fixed for hearing of the peition.

He said that SNGP also increased natural gas traffic from Rs1,283 per MMBTU to Rs1,650 recently and now wanted to charge rates for such a product, which was never used by his clients.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2023