BADIN, March 8: Villagers of Chak 30 in Shaheed Fazil Rahu taluka and village Booky in Khoski have appealed to President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali for providing their villages with basic amenities, including provision of electricity, which they had been deprived for so many years.

A number of villages along the coastal belt of the Badin district have remained without basic facilities such as electricity, clean drinking water, health and sanitation.

This correspondent learnt about these villages and visited them on Friday to confirm the facts.

The main reason behind the absence of development in these villages appeared to be frequent changes of governments in the past and flawed implementation of development schemes on part of the district government.

One of these villages, Chak-30, is located about 42 kilometres away on the outskirts of Deh Jhole-3 within the jurisdiction of the Ahmed Rajo union council in Shaheed Fazil Rahu taluka and has a population of 3,500 persons.

The villagers complained that their area had been deprived of any development scheme since the village had been settled in the 1960 during the Ayub regime.

Saeed Ahmed Siyal, an elder of the village, said that the residents had been without the facilities of health, electricity supply and education.

He blamed political interference for the absence of electrification of the village, saying the village was yet to be provided with a power supply connection despite the fact that a high-power transmission line passes through a nearby area.

Referring to the Asghar Gujjar village of Chak-34, which comprises little more than a few houses and located barely a kilometre away from Chak-30, he said that even this small settlement had been provided electricity.

Villagers accused the Nazim of the union council of embezzling a million rupees, which had been sanctioned for the electrification of their village.

A similar situation was seen in the Booky village in Khoski, which had been settled since before the partition in 1947.

An electrification scheme, approved on six occasions, was not implemented despite the fact that the high-power transmission line passed near the entrance of the village.

The people of both the villages urged the PML-Q government to fulfil its promise regarding provision of basic facilities to the people at their doorsteps.