Jirga seeks civic facilities for lower Tanawal

HARIPUR: Speakers at a jirga on Thursday decried the missing education, health, and other civic facilities in the lower Tanawal area of the Haripur district.

Jehanzeb Khan Tanoli, Saif Khan Tanoli, Zakir Khan and others from union councils of Beer, Soha and Ladarmang highlighted the issues while talking to journalists at the Haripur Press Club.

They deplored that lower Tanawal was once the part of princely state of Amb but has been kept backward deliberately for unknown reasons. The speakers said the people of the area rendered sacrifices twice for the country. It was, they added, first by announcing accession of the princely state of Amb to Pakistan and later when their fertile lands were used for the Tarbela Dam Project.

They said the Tarbela Lake divided our families, destroyed centuries-old cultural identity and in return they got under-development, unemployment and migration of our people to Punjab and Sindh in search of livelihood.

The speakers said about 35 to 40 truckloads of gypsum and soapstone costing millions were being excavated and exported daily to different industrial units of KP and Punjab from different villages of lower Tanawal without spending a penny on the uplift of their area.

They alleged that the politicians who had contested elections and made it to the assemblies in the past had adopted discriminatory approaches in uplift projects.The speakers said had they carried out development schemes on merit, the area would not have not been facing missing facilities.

They said there was not a single gynecologist in the entire area and the patients needing emergency treatment died on the way to DHQs Hospital.The jirga members said despite repeated requests, no politicians ever bothered to address the need of their youth for establishing the campus of Haripur university or a technical college or even constructed factories.They said the people of Lower Tanawal convened a grand jirga and decided to field Jehanzeb Khan Tanoli of Darwaza as their candidate from PK 46 Haripur for the coming elections.