CHITRAL, Dec 16: Since the work started on Lowari tunnel five years ago prices of landed property in Chitral are on the steep rise, property dealers here say.

Talking to this correspondent on Thursday, a local property dealer, Abdul Ghaffar, said that before the work started on Lowari tunnel project the price of land measuring one chukorum (a local unit measuring 11,664 square feet) in Chitral town was between Rs0.5 million and Rs0.8 million.

“All this is an old story and now the price of one chukorum has jumped to as high as Rs8 million,” he said. Giving reasons for the high prices of land, he said that Chitral was a mountainous region with a nominal fraction of plain area and demand for having a piece of land was on the rise with rapid growth in population.

Mr Ghaffar said that keeping in view that ultimately the Lowari tunnel would be connected with the Central Asian Republics via Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan gave Chitral a bright prospect of being converted into a business hub in the near future. He said that the business magnates now throng here with 'bags of money' to buy land in the town area.

He said that non-local persons had built high-rise commercial plazas in Chitral and it was surprising that none of such buildings was owned by a local person.

Another property dealer Liaquat Ali said that people in the upper and remote parts of Chitral preferred to settle in the city to avail of the civic amenities. Mr Ali said that majority of such people had been working abroad and to construct a house in Chitral town was their priority.

He said that the absence of any meaningful town planning in the city had given rise to the problem of congestion and high prices of real estate. He said that in the past all the government buildings were built in haphazard manner, leading to wastage of land.

It has also been observed that the value of landed property in Drosh town had also surged in the past few years. Drosh is the second major town of Chitral situated at about 19 kilometres from Lowari Pass.

Drosh has been an important town since the British era who had established their contentment there in the late 1890s. Property dealers say that the price of all the roadside land from Lowari tunnel to Chitral city was going up.

A revenue official told Dawn that registration of landed property had increased over the years, which was essential to legalise the deed of sale and purchase of land. He said that the land settlement process in the district was in the final phase, which would give a true account of the availability of land in the area.