Bridge at Merdin Gobor crucial for connecting villages to facilities
CHITRAL: The suspension bridge at Merdin village in Garam Chashma valley connects more than seven hamlets from Zhitor to Shah Sadim to the facilities of education, healthcare, food godown as well as recreation situated on the other side of the river.
The villagers of Merdin told this scribe that the bridge had enabled more than five hundred households to have an access to the high school, grain godown of food department, basic health unit and playground situated on the other side of the river.
They said that in the summer season, the high flood in the river used to wash away the bridge on the site and made them to use a diversion situated in the downstream for which they travelled for two hours.
The bridge constructed by the local government two decades ago collapsed some years ago after which they were using a pedestrian bridge when the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme rushed to their help under its Central Asia Poverty Alleviation Programme by constructing the bridge.
In the absence of the bridge, the residents of the villagers on the opposite road of the valley road transported the items of daily consumption on the back of mules after crossing over the pedestrian bridge.
The villagers said that to bring the stretchers of patients or the injured were lifted by them on their shoulders and walked for hours and risked their lives while passing over the narrow pedestrian bridge.
The villagers on the valley side narrated what a mental agony they went through after sending their children to the schools or the homes of their relatives situated on the opposite side and kept on praying for their safe return after crossing through the bridge.
The villages on the side of the valley road faced difficulties of having access to the government facilities while those on the opposite side of the road faced transportation facilities for access to the road in the absence of jeepable bridge.
The farmers in the opposite side of the valley road grew potato crops on commercial scale and spent a large sum of their earning in transportation of their produce from the fields to the road on the back of mules which they hired.
Tourism is also one of the sectors benefited of the bridge facility at Merdin as the tourist resort and pastures were situated on the opposite side of the valley road as the fairy meadows on the foothills of Merdin provided an ideal location for camping.
The villagers Saifud Din, Abdul Hafiz, Jalaluddin and others reiterated that the facilities enjoyed by the residents of the valley on both sides of the river had become possible due to the bridge in the place.
