RAWALPINDI, April 24: Residents of the violence-hit Kurram Agency are bedevilled by shortage of essential items and life-saving drugs due to the continuous occupation of the Kohat-Parachinar road by militants.

The people are living in a curfew-like situation because the only road that connects Parachinar with other parts of country has been occupied by armed militants for five months, bringing transportation and travelling to and from the restive area to a halt.

The severity of the situation can be judged from the fact that the government has provided ‘small occupancy choppers’ for people to travel to their hometowns because using the Kohat-Parachinar road is quite risky.

MNA Sajid Hussain Toori from Parachinar feared that the people would die of hunger if the road was not opened and freed from militants in three-four days, adding the residents were relying on locally-produced rice as a major food item.

He said MNA Maulana Fazlur Rehman had been asked to lead a grand jirga and diffuse the situation. He said the jirga would sit on Friday and negotiate between the two groups.

Mr Toori said life-saving drugs were not available and patients were not allowed to travel to Kohat or Peshawar for treatment.

Since there has been no supply of essential items to the agency for five months, prices of the commodities, including flour, are 20 times higher than in other parts of the country.

Sardar Ali, working in a state-run bank in Islamabad and a resident of the Piwor area in Parachinar, told Dawn he had paid Rs3,000 for a 20kg bag of flour, adding that the prices of vegetable and other essential items were 20 times higher than the market rates and were not available in each corner of the tribal area.

“We get the Pakistani items through the Afghanistan border which is why the prices of commodities have escalated and I fear a severe food crisis in the coming days. There are no life-saving drugs in hospitals and we can’t move to other parts of the country due to the presence of armed militants along the Kohat-Parachinar road,” he complained.

People belonging to the Kurram Agency and working in other cities have not been able to visit their hometowns for five months because there have been cases of militants killing passengers. Recently, four passengers were killed on their way to Parachinar after their car was intercepted on the Kohat-Parachinar road and their bodies were hanged at the site in order to scare passengers away from the road.

The government has provided two planes having the capacity of carrying 60 passengers from Peshawar to Parachinar on a daily basis.

However, MNA Toori said the facility was not enough to cope with the demands of the people and called for early opening of the road link.