KARAK, Aug 3: People living in a desolate montainous region in the south-eastern periphery of Karak district are deprived of even basic amenities and face great hardships due to lack of approach roads to the area.

People mostly use dry water channels running between steep and rugged mountains to get to other places. They have to go on foot for not less than three hours through unfriendly gorges to reach the nearest metalled road to the north of the area.

These sparsely-located clusters of houses and small villages in the foothills of bleak mountains include Ghar Kala, Manaka Banda, Walaki Mahabatkhel, Faqirabad, Khusra, Kandokhel, Lawaghar Chinikhel, Zaibi Chinikhel, Sarobi, Zamra, Sasalai Algad and Tangi Khwola.

The residents of these villages complain that none of the past governments ever bothered to look at the hard life of the people and improve the living conditions for them.

"These villages starkly need a proper road and nothing else, as the people of this hard and tough terrain have been living without health and education facilities or have any access to other civic amenities, God knows for how long," said that Nawar Shah, sitting at his small grocery shop in the shade of a steep mountain in Sarobi village.

"We face extreme difficulties whenever somebody falls ill in the village. We have to carry the patient on a cot through the meandering gorges and mountain passes for three hours to reach a health care facility and often the patient expires before reaching it," said that Mr Shah, who plans to go to the United Arab Emirates to earn his livelihood.

"In emergency or delivery cases, the villagers have to pass through untold miseries and often the expecting mothers give birth on the way to hospital," he said. The village boys often run errands and bring provisions home from far away villages. Even to get a simple painkiller, you have to go on foot along the dry water course for hours on end, some elders of the Sarobi village said.

Sakhiur Rehman, a resident of Lawaghar Chinikhel, said that the children of these villages face a bleak future as they have to go a long way to reach a school. Although the village has two primary schools, one for boys and one for girls, and one middle school, besides two private schools, but the village children have either to go to a high school at least six kilometres away or discontinue education.

The problem becomes more pestering for the girls as they hardly venture out of the village to get education after passing their primary classes. A 10-year-old boy, Rahim Khan, whose father is in jail for some crime, said that he had to go two kilometres to reach the nearest primary school.

A high school student, Khalid Rehman, also feels disheartened as he has to get up around 5'o clock in the morning to reach his school in three hours on foot. He complained that he felt drained out when he sat in the class.

Elders in Lawaghar Chinikhel, Zaibi Chinikhel, Sarobi, Kandokhel and Zamra said that the teachers in the local primary schools seldom came for duty. A lady teacher in Sarobi has hired a local girl to perform her duty and teach the village children.

Although the villagers said that they faced little problem of drinking water, but due to the receding water table a number of wells in these areas had dried up. The village women bring water on donkeys and on heads from far off wells and springs. They have to put in extreme labour to carry the pitchers and guide the donkeys up and down the steep slopes.