CHITRAL: Residents of the Torkhow and Terich valleys have expressed serious concerns over the substandard asphalting work on the Booni-Buzund Road, fearing that the newly laid surface will begin to deteriorate within months and the vital artery could be reduced to ruins by next year.
Locals insisted that the formation of the sub-base and base layers runs completely counter to approved specifications, with oversised gravel being utilised in direct violation of the project agreement.
Speaking to local media at the Chitral Press Club on Sunday, advocate Waqas Ahmed stated that according to the approved engineering documents for the road project, the recommended dimension for gravel in the base surface must be between 0.18 to 1.5 inches before compaction and asphalt laying.
“In practice, boulders measuring up to one foot are being dumped into the base level,” Mr. Ahmed alleged. “Achieving the required compaction standard with stones of this size is a physical impossibility.”
Mr. Ahmed further revealed that the project’s PC-I document mandated an accumulative compacted thickness of one foot for the sub-base and base layers combined before any asphalt is poured. Currently, the work on the ground fails to meet this depth.
He added that approved width of the road as given in the PC-I is 32 feet consisting of 12 feet of central asphalting flanked by 6 feet of Plain Cement Concrete (PCC) on either side.
He regretted that in actual execution, both the width and the material quantity being deployed are significantly less than the desired standard.
The president of Torkhow and Terich Road Front (TTRF), Mufti Abdul Ghani Chaman said that the Booni-Buzund Road project was initially launched in 2008 and the people of Torkhow and Terich waited for 16 years for its completion.
He said that the struggle has not been without cost as last year more than 300 TTRF activists were arrested during mass public protests staged against the inordinate delays plaguing the project.
When contacted for official clarification on the matter, the executive engineer of the C&W Division Upper Chitral did not respond to multiple phone calls.
Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2026
