CHITRAL, May 26: The residents of Ayun village here have warned the government that in case of any further delay in payment of forest royalty to them by the harvesting contractors, they will block the road to stop timber transportation from Chitral to Chakdara depot.

In a meeting held here, the villagers expressed their anguish over the inordinate delay in the clearance of royalty allegedly by the contractors Mohammad Khan and Shahzada Parvez.

They said that according to rules, the contractors of Forest Development Corporation should readily pay the royalty to the locals after marking of the forest of Gol, Bumburate, for harvesting.

The villagers said that the contractors had transported millions of cubic feet of timber from the area, but they were still hesitant to pay the locals their due right as given in the Gazette Notification of 1975.

They also alleged that the contractors had indulged in excessive cutting of forests beyond the marking limits and said that flash flood in the area last year were mainly due to the denuding forests. They asked the provincial government to stop the merciless cutting of trees.

STUDENTS SUFFER:

The students of Government Centennial Model School for Girls, Chitral, have been unable to attend classes for the last over a month due to breakdown of the only school bus and unavailability of funds for its repair.

Talking to this correspondent here on Thursday, a number of parents, including Sajjad Ahmed, Saifur Rahman and Noor Afzal, said that the old bus was carrying the students from Seen Lusht to their school in Bakarabad and back home, as they had no other source of conveyance.

They lamented that the school administration failed to repair it while saying that it had been facing funds shortage. The parents said that they could not afford to manage private conveyance for their daughters.

They have appealed to the education department to sanction necessary funds for the bus repair so that studies of their daughters did not suffer.