Pain and suffering at Lawari

Fariha Mansoor

Since the very beginning, Chitral and its inhabitants have faced injustice in all sectors of life whether it is related to education, jobs or, most notably, the roads and transportation system. Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our characters to be passive in its presence, and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves. Nowadays the schedule of opening Lowari tunnel once in a week has been a severe problem for the residents of Chitral, it is the humiliation of the innocent people and the government bodies are ignoring such a big issue that is putting local’s lives at risk and causing problem for all the chitralis belonging to different fields of life.

On 13th January 2017, hundreds of vehicles were stuck at Lowari tunnel, while going on their way to Peshawar from Chitral and conversely the passengers traveling from Peshawar to Chitral were also jammed at Dir. Among the travelers were females, children, patients and elderly people who faced relentless torture were trapped whole day long and the whole night in -11’C. They are helplessly stuck without any contact with their families neither with any helping aid. Survival over there is a big challenge that passengers are facing right now and it is about to be two days but still, there is no any action to be seen.

If it had not been the mismanagement of the National Highway Authority and the administration we would not be in such a big mess. To pay upon millions of millions of rupees in bonuses for incomplete work, poor performance and unavailability of services are the height of both the provincial government and federal government’s waste and mismanagement. So the officials are requested to take serious actions to help them get out of this worst suffering because to save a life of a single human is equivalent to saving the lives of humanity. It is an appeal to the government officials stop doing this barbarous crime again and again with naïve people and be pragmatic.

The contributor is a student of Communication and Media Studies at Fatima Jinnah Women University