The Astonishing Dichal Road
By Raheel Iqbal
At an elevation of 11,000 meters, Dichal is an ancient village located in a remote area of Astore District. This area has no road access with only pony tracks and fewer agricultural resources. Residents of the village mainly depend on agriculture with main production of potato and wheat.
Knowing the importance of the road access the villagers took a very valiant decision; they decided to construct the road on their own. For this to materialize, the villagers had to carry two tractors in a manual way. Now this was really a very tough job to do nevertheless, despite of knowing the hurdles they disassembled the parts of the tractors that took 3-4 days. The most important and daunting task now was to carry those parts of tractors physically and cover a distance of 5 kilometers. It took more than two weeks for the villagers to reach their desired destination. Once the parts reached, the fitting and assembling process took another week. All these things being done, the villagers started the construction and pavement work on their own with very limited sources.
ETI IFAD felt the interest and need of the people and took the proposal of making the road for the courageous masses of the region. ETI approved 19km of the road including phase-2 that was of 4 km on the KKH side. On the other hand Water and Power started the work of the bridge and completed in a very short period.
It was now easy to pass an excavator through the bridge for the construction of road. Now ETI is ruling the scheme and about 60% of the work has been done and it’s expected to be completed in this season.
ETI IFAD has always been working for the uplift and advancement of the people of deprived areas and for that they are investing in rural areas of Gilgit Baltistan. Dichal Astore is also one of remote areas of Astore with a very difficult terrain. But the organization of ETI despite of knowing the hurdles took that scheme and is facilitating the people with their people-friendly policies around the region. The people of Dichal truly appreciate the endeavors of the organization and are happy to have a road access to their remote village.
