HARIPUR, Sept 10 The farming community of the district that suffered a colossal loss in flash floods is yet to get compensation.

Among all other areas of Hazara Division, total loss of fruit and vegetable farms and nurseries in Haripur district spread over 524.51 acres was estimated at Rs17.346 million.

During recent rains and flash floods 29 people including women and children died, 21 sustained injuries, 8 people were still missing from different parts of the district, 76 cattle head, 3,250 chickens were killed during the first spell of torrential rains, according to data collected by the agriculture department.

The rain and flash flood also played havoc with the property rendering 3,000 to 3,500 families homeless, destroying road network, pathways, bridges, health

facilities, schools, watermills, water and electricity supply lines, etc in over 40 union councils of the district.

Official figures suggest that 1,019 houses, including pucca houses, were completely destroyed and 1,606 partially damaged by heavy rain. While the other damaged structures included 51 govt schools, 10 health facilities, 3 poultry farms, 27 roads, 5 bridges, 7 pathways, 33 water supply schemes, 9 electricity transformers, 5 canals, 6 flood protection walls, over 10 water mills and crops and orchards spread over hundreds of acres of land.

Apart from destruction to the infrastructure and life, the torrential rains also caused heavy losses of millions to the agriculture system in the district.

According to agriculture department sources, standing crops of maize, barley, sugarcane, etc were destroyed at an area of 392.32 acres, vegetables including bitter gourd, tomato, spinach, cauliflower, green chilies etc from an area of 76.13 acres, orchards of guava, loquat etc destroyed from 54.25 acres and flower nurseries washed away by flash flood was estimated at 1.81 acres.

“I've lost the entire maize crop that I had sown. I would not be able to repay the debt I've taken,” said Roshad Din, who was worried about running his kitchen, told Dawn.

Another poor farmer Khan Bahadur said that rain had damaged his crop of cauliflower which was the only source of income for his family.

It was learnt that the agriculture department officials had sent the estimates of destruction to the provincial government. Despite the fact that the government had started receiving financial assistance from different donors, the payment of compensation to Haripur based farmers was yet to be started.

Haripur has a total irrigated area of 77,836 acres and the total population which was economically active in the rural areas depending on agriculture and its related economic activities was 18.2 per cent out of the total one million population of the district.