ISLAMABAD, March 28: Speakers at a seminar on Chitral's past, present and future here on Sunday criticized the discriminatory attitude of successive governments against the district and said immediate measures were needed to bring the valley on a par with other parts of the country and remove deprivation among its people.

The seminar was organized by Chitral Youth Welfare Society. The speakers said, although, Chitral was the first of the princely states to accede to Pakistan unconditionally at the time of partition, the rulers treated the area even worse than their colonial predecessors after independence.

They said, at present, the geo-strategically significant valley stood at the lowest rung in development sector and its about 0.4 million people remained cut-off from the rest of the country for six months every year.

Besides, Khowar, the native language of Chitral which is also spoken in some parts of the Northern Areas, is threatened with extinction due to lack of government support and pervasive invasion of foreign media.

They said the government should take immediate steps to conserve and promote small languages, dialects and cultures to strengthen national cohesion. Educationist and historian Mukarram Shah said Chitral had always been a hotbed of foreign conspiracies vying to subdue each other under the Great Game.

Through a well-hatched conspiracy a large swath of land in the south-west of the valley was handed over to Afghanistan at the time of Durand Line demarcation in 1893 while the areas on its north-east were merged with the Northern Areas, he added.

Researcher and poet Sher Wali Khan Aseer said with the passage of time Chitral's geo-strategic significance had increased and the area could be used as a window to the Central Asian countries.

He said by constructing the Lowari tunnel Pakistan could open up its borders to the mineral-rich Central Asian countries through an all-weather route. Mr Aseer said Chitral presented the shortest all-weather land passage to the Central Asian countries and a rail track could also be laid on the Kunar-Nawa pass through Chitral via the Wakhan corridor into Tajikistan.

Jamaat-i-Islami MNA Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali said he was satisfied that the government had taken the Lowari tunnel project seriously realizing the hardships of the people.

He said President Gen Pervez Musharraf and NWFP Governor Lt-Gen (retired) Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah had taken special interest in constructing an all-weather route to the district.

The MMA leader criticized the organizers for arranging a cultural show on the occasion and said resources should not be wasted on such activities which he termed un-Islamic. Brig (retired) Dr Sardar Azam Affendi said proper education was the pre-requisite for development of the area on a sustainable basis.