By Zahiruddin
CHITRAL; The local intellectual and author of many books on Chitral and former project manager of an IUCN project in Chitral, Dr. Inayatullah Faizi has said that Chitral remains as backward as it was in early 1960s when its status of state was changed to a district of Malakand Division and the irony is that due to the peaceful nature of the natives, the government has always paid them less attention for development.
Addressing on the topic of ‘burning issues of Chitral’ in the public forum Mahraka held by Chitral Press Club, he said that lack of envisioned leadership in Chitral to foresee the needs of future was the main factor that kept the district entangled with myriad of issues in all sectors of development.
He said that health, education, communication, agriculture and irrigation were the sectors where the district lagged far behind than its neighboring district of Upper Dir which was one the three princely states annexed with the province in 1969.
“Chitral stretches over an area of 14850 square kilometers and it was a pity that the length of blacktopped road is only 185 kilometers while 100 percent villages of upper Dir were connected with the district headquarters through blacktopped roads.
The Baroghil valley of Chital got a jeepable dirt track only three years ago and there are scores of villages inside the district which are yet to have similar facility and in this advanced age, the villages have to walk on feet and remove their patients and injured to the hospitals in stretcher.
They do not know about mechanized farming as no tractor, thresher and other mechanical implements in the absence of jeepable tracks and one can well imagine the pathetic condition of people having no access to road”, he said.
Dr. Faizi said that till two years ago, Chitral was the only district in the country which used to remain cut off from the rest for more than five months of the extended winter season when the Lowari Pass received snow and the wretched people had to wait for six decades after independence for the construction of Lowari tunnel.
In the sector of health, he said, their state was more dismal than others which can be gauged from the fact that for a simple CT scan one have to travel to Peshawar from Chitral spending more than Rs. 40,000 and less than 50 percent frequently desired diagnostic facilities are available in t he DHQ hospital.
“More than fifty percent posts of district specialists are vacant and similar is the case of medical officers in the hospital while the condition of primary healthcare is highly pathetic making the people dependent on the DHQ hospital”, he said.
“The sector of education is equally neglected as there are only two public sector degree colleges each for boys and girls while Chitral is the only district having no polytechnic institute.
The students in the far flung areas of the district walk for hours daily to reach their nearest schools which increased exponentially the drop out rate while less than one percent students continued their education after matric and the number of students dropped further who could pursue their education in universities”, he said.
Dr. Faizi lamented that in the sector of hydro power generation (energy), the negligence of the rulers was criminal as the fabulous water resources were not exploited to generate electricity whose aggregate generation capacity has been estimated at 20 thousand mega watts by a German organization.
He said that at present, lower Chitral was provided electricity from the national grid but the consumers have become weary of it due to the unscheduled loadshedding and extremely low voltage while the upper Chitral is without electricity for the last three years when the Reshun power house was washed away by the flash flood in 2015.
Dr. Faizi said that the people of Chitral are known for their peaceful and amiability who have never made any law and order situation for the government by resorting to violent protest to get their demands accepted.
He opined that the calmness and serene nature of Chitralis coupled with their high esteem for law are the attributes which kept them backward as the government rushed to those areas where people make a nuisance for it.
