PESHAWAR, Sept 23: A retired military officer from Nizampur, a suburban wasteland in district Nowshera, has exhausted himself in trying to seek an audience with the NWFP governor on problems of his area but without success, his efforts defeated by the governor’s military secretary.

Talking to Dawn, Lt Col. Amanullah Khan, an octogenarian, said his entire locality situated on the right bank of River Indus was plagued with a host of social problems.

The necessity, he said, compelled him to brief the governor on the backwardness of his remote area, where people were without any hospital and women were without any high school.

Adding insult to injury is the high-handedness they experienced at the hands of the Frontier Cooperative Bank.

He said he telephoned at the Governor’s House for his military secretary to arrange a brief meeting with the governor. But the telephone operator told him that he should apply in writing as to why he wanted to see the governor, he added.

I had personally submitted two applications in June, 2002, but to this day, despite numerous efforts, I have neither been able to talk to the military secretary nor have I received anything in writing from the Governor’s House, he lamented.

Explaining his sufferings, he said he had obtained Rs200,000 from the Frontier Cooperative Bank in 1985 and then paid back to the bank Rs332,082. The bank is still demanding of him to pay Rs9,8421 more, he added.

He visited the registrar of the bank in Peshawar and briefed him about the torture he had endured, but the latter expressed his inability to settle it.

Through his second application, he said, he invited the NWFP governor to visit his area, sandwiched as it was between the Cherat Hills and the River Indus, and witness the pathetic conditions of his people, but to no avail.

Mr Khan claimed that he wanted to apprise the governor of the conflicting interests at the individual, village and union council levels, “which was a logical outcome of the government’s negligence at the decision-making forums.”

“My people are short of medical facilities and the nearest hospital is located at 50kms away in Nowshera. The womenfolk are constrained to discontinue their education after matriculation level,” he observed.

He asked the government to construct water-lifting scheme at Indus River and provide irrigation water to his area, or the people would face a famine-like situation.

He said if a retired army officer, who had been a senior of Gen Ziaul Haq and Lt-Gen Fazal Haq at the armoured corps, had not been heard, the red tape the common people would be facing could well be imagined.