It is a rainy July day at the Bely Baba Bazaar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s northern Shangla district. Irfan Ullah, all of 16 years old, sits in the driver’s seat of a 2004 Suzuki mini jeep — marketed as Potohar in Pakistan — which is very popular among locals to navigate the dirt roads snaking up and down mountains in treacherous terrain.

Irfan is waiting for rides to take them to Pagorai village, which is part of the sprawling township of Alpuri, comprising roughly 25,000 souls. The distance from Bely Baba Bazaar to Pagorai is between five to six kilometres. But the journey takes around half an hour, sometimes more, due to the single-track Pagorai link road being extremely narrow, and vehicles being unable to cross each other except at specific wide points on the route.

Irfan’s starting point is at 4,100 feet above sea level, while Alpuri Top is at 5,200 feet. It helps that only two dozen or so cars use the route daily, making the sharper curves easier to navigate.

PEDAL AND THE METAL

“At certain turns, we have to literally use the brake and pedal simultaneously to constantly inch forward and reverse to create the angle to turn,” Irfan, who has been driving on these routes for the last two years, tells Eos.

His elder brother, 19-year-old Fasih Uddin, who also drives a jeep but is old enough to have a driving licence — for which the minimum age is 18 — joins us at the waiting point.

The roads in Pakistan’s mountainous north can often be dangerous, even for experienced drivers, where accidents can be fatal. Why, then, are underage drivers plying such routes?

Fasih tells Eos that, at certain points, the road becomes almost vertical, and even a minor mistake can prove fatal. Only last month, a driver lost control of his jeep on the road, with the accident claiming nine lives.

When Eos points out to Fasih that his brother is underage, he says philosophically that death could happen on the road or in a coalmine. He then goes on to explain that his father died in a coalmine explosion. “We have minimal employment opportunities here and poor education,” he says.

It has also proved fortunate for the brothers that the jeep owner is their relative, and trusts them with her vehicle. Being a widow, she was unable to put her vehicle to use. In Irfan, she has a driver who she can pay less than others, due to his lack of a driving licence. Eos tried to contact the car owner but she declined to comment, citing traditional limitations.

The brothers insist that, with limited resources and opportunities, they have limited options to support their widowed mother and three younger siblings, including two sisters.

“We can either work as coal miners or as drivers,” says the elder brother. “Even experienced drivers die on these roads,” adds Fasih wistfully.

Jehan Feroz has spent over three decades working as a public transporter in the area. For him, only locals can traverse the tricky roads of Shangla. “If you are not an expert of [these] roads, driving here is suicide,” he tells Eos.

He acknowledges the issues of underage drivers, but insists that better roads are likely to reduce the number of accidents.

ON A SLIPPERY PATH

Accidents are common in Pakistan’s north, which sees a high tourist footfall; the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) tourism department tells Eos that KP had 16.9 million tourists visit last year. The numbers can vary, but a host of factors, from negligent driving, slippery roads and landslides, among others, can result in fatal accidents.

Moreover, the number of fatalities is often under-reported, with Shangla police records showing only two casualties this year. This is because they only tally fatalities of incidents for which a first information report is filed.

When Eos approaches the Rescue 1122 department, the spokesperson claims that they have a combined figure of fatalities and injuries. According to them, Shangla district had 270 reported road traffic accidents and 320 “casualties/injuries” in the period from July 2023 till June 2024. When pressed for the number of fatalities, however, the spokesperson at the Shangla rescue service asks Eos to tally it from news and social media reports.

‘HELP YOURSELF’

There remains a minimum possibility of deploying police on mountainous roads, particularly the patchy dirt roads linking small villages to the main roads.

The district police officer (DPO) of Shangla, Imran Khan, acknowledges this limitation, saying that the police lack the manpower to completely cover the roads in the region, including in areas that often become inaccessible during different times of the year, such as during flooding, landslides and snow.

“As a result, the number of incidents is higher on roads where there are no patrols or checkpoints, as compared to the main highways,” he tells Eos.

Similarly, the Rescue 1122 spokesperson says that they face difficulties in handling road traffic accident emergencies due to the condition of the roads, which can only be accessed in jeeps. “Our ambulances can’t access such areas and it is difficult to transport patients in the jeeps,” says Faizi.

Locals say the government departments and elected representatives have done little to improve the road situation in their area.

“The most that these officers do is provide us with excavators to level the dirt patches into a track for vehicles,” says Bakhtmani Gul, who lives in a village that is part of Alpuri sub-district.

He says he has been involved with other locals in transporting tar, which was leftover from the under-construction parts of the road connecting Bisham and Swat, to improve their roads on a self-help basis.

FINDING THE FIX

While locals are cognizant of the problems facing them, it is their own actions that can sometimes be counterproductive, says Shakir Khan, a mechanic in Bely Baba.

The percentage of local drivers who get their vehicles regularly checked, Shakir tells Eos, is very low. “It is essential to get your vehicle regularly inspected, but people tend to have a cavalier attitude towards it, only coming to me when the problem has spiralled out of control.”

Another reason, he says, for such accidents is that the jeeps are overloaded with passengers.

The Potohar has seating space for four people, two in the front and two in the back. However, most drivers wait for at least five passengers, and sometimes the number of people in this vehicle can be more than 10, he tells Eos.

“This overloading, of people or goods, can put excess pressure on the brakes and other parts of the vehicle, causing it to malfunction, which can lead to tragedy.”

Mohammad Ali Babakhel, who is the additional inspector general of police operations in KP, tells Eos there is a need to identify the “hotspots” where accidents occur in order to take corrective action. However, he fails to identify the authority that would undertake this task before moving on to other issues, such as regulating public transport, the construction, fencing and widening of roads, and placing a ban on the illegal construction of rough, mud roads without engineering rules.

He also talks about making the licence issuance system more robust to ensure underage driving doesn’t take place.

However, this is unlikely to happen in the next two years, by which time Irfan would already be eligible to drive — unless there is an accident.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Shangla, KP. X: @umar_shangla

Published in Dawn, EOS, July 28th, 2024