BAJAUR: Residents of several Lowi Mamund tehsil areas here on Monday staged a protest demonstration against the use of ‘substandard’ material in the rehabilitation of the Laghari-Inayat Kallay Road.

Youth and social activists attended the demonstration staged in the Tarkhoo area.

The protesters climbed onto the machinery used for asphalting the road, and chanted slogans against the project contractor for using “extremely cheap and substandard material” in the road reconstruction.

The demonstrators said the rehabilitation work on the eight-kilometre road, which was launched after a delay of over two and a half years, was of poor quality.

They said that the quality of the project was below the standard fixed by the roads and highway department.

The protesters held the contractor, the local PTI MPA and officials of the roads and highways department responsible for the substandard work. They said they had brought the issue to their notice time and again, but to no avail.

The protesters, who had halted the work on the road for a while, agreed to end the protest after a delegation from PTI MPA Dr Hamidur Rehman’s development project assured them that the unsatisfactory portions of the road would be reconstructed.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2026