PTI MNA demands changes to road project

PESHAWAR: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Member National Assembly Shandana Gulzar on Monday asked the federal government to make changes to the road project as the present design would affect the people of her constituency and their agricultural lands.

Speaking at a press conference along with others at the Peshawar Press Club, she said there was a plan to construct a link road by using the land in her constituency. The PTI legislator said the proposed road would pass through the agricultural land and populated areas. She said that 90 percent of the people in her constituency were poor with limited resources.

The PTI MNA said the people had small ancestral farmlands for sustenance but the federal government and National Highways Authority wanted to snatch that land from them by constructing the road. Shandana Gulzar said she represented 1.6 million people in the National Assembly. She said nobody was against the development schemes and the institutions implementing them but issues should be resolved through talks in the best interests of the people.

The PTI MNA recalled the farmers who feared to be affected by the road project had filed a petition in court against this scheme. She said she had informed the World Bank about the residents’ reservations over the project as only one km-long road would affect a population of 10,000 people. Shandana Gulzar said the project had been pending for the last 12 years but now the federal government was in a hurry to go ahead with that.