What does Chitral need? – By: Rehmat Karim Baig
Chitral as a mountain and difficult region of the country has got numerous hurdles. It was due to geographical location and we have inherited all constraints since the beginning when the first group of visitors decided to stay here permanently. It is certainly a difficult country to live with extreme cold and, untimely rains, earthquakes, landslides, excess of rivers to cross but shortage of water for irrigation such as the situation faced by the inhabitants of scores of villages and hamlets, inaccessiblities to resources of various nature, avalanche sides, floods, rolling stone sites, river erosions, silting of rivers along the main stream, as well as issues like tribal biases, territorial prejudices owing to our rulers of the last two thousand years. The natural hurdles were and still faced by communities scattered all over the area and have survived juggling with the forces of nature but the man made hurdles are deeply rooted and still crop up unexpectedly.
Here, now, we must focus on education, health and AGRICULTURE ( Horticulture) in order to improve our economic standard; and we have to reap from that sector if developed in a planned and systematic manner. We have opportunities to grow fruits in our plots –fruits that are marketable such as Walnuts, Almond, Apricots, Apples, Cherries, better varieties of Fig etc. our soil is rich for these fruit trees. If seen from a birds eye view all the trees that we have around us in fresh and green position are more than 50 % fruitless trees-have little value such as to be used for fuel or rough timber. The fruitless trees have to be replaced with fruit trees. We must plant and grow fruit trees, the ones given above to get cash from the market. For getting saplings of fruit trees in large number there should be nurseries all over the area. At present the number of govt. and private nurseries are quite insufficient to meet the demand. The saplings from the nurseries of lower Chitral fail to get roots in the higher regions and transportation is much difficult. The Nurseries must be developed in the high altitude areas and the interested horticulturists can get plants from the higher region even late in spring and they are quicker to get roots in the hot areas in lower areas as well as in the high altitude settlements.
There should be a wider scale drive from the Agriculture deptt. As well as the NGOs to extend support to the willing farmers by imparting basic information all over the area and carry out follow up programs. Fresh fruit and dry fruit packaging mechanism/ manufacture of products of fruit, should be made available at low cost and in proper season and marketing mechanism is also to be introduced for sale of ripe fruits with information centres in all parts of Chitral. Increasing fresh and dried fruit will bring better income to the owners of the plot compared to cereals that produce very poor yield. This side of boosting economy may help unemployed men and women and reduce the joblessness tension among the educated youth. In the water shortage villages solar pumps can work for supply of water for irrigating fruit trees as well as vegetables. Motivation should be extended to educated youth to own this side of agriculture and start self employment. The motivation could be in the shape of stipends like the payment to girls in schools. This is one of the so many solutions to the heap of problems faced by the people of Chitral especially by the poorly educated youth that has run into thousands within a small mountain community. Other solutions to the hurdles of Chitral in communication are being enumerated but no serious measures are visible. Boosting land produce in the form of Horticulture is a better alternative to enter food market with better and scientific ways of food processing according to hyegenic and value added acceptability to visitors and consumer markets.
Rahmat Karim Baig
