Flood-hit residents demand roads, bridges reconstruction

MANSEHRA: The affected residents of the Manor valley on Saturday threatened to block the Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad road to traffic if roads, bridges and electric turbines washed away in recent flash floods were not reconstructed immediately.

“We have been facing a food shortage, and local children cannot take classes as arteries and bridges linking dozens of villages with only high school in the entire valley are washed away in flash floods,” Jabar Khan, a local told reporters.

Flanked by a group of locals, he said that Biyar and Pichal roads and 12 bridges were washed away in floods and residents were still cut off from the rest of the district, and even within the valley too.

Jabbar Khan said students of Shahkund, Banda Manor, Renhar, Singal Garan, Shak Karian, Lower Sari, Chanba, Upper Sari, Biyar, and Lower Sari villages enrolled in the government high school couldn’t attend classes after roads and bridges were swept away by recent floods.

Another resident, Ghulam Hussain said that they couldn’t take patients, particularly women to hospitals in Balakot and Mansehra as all roads and bridges connecting valley with Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad road were swept away in the July 30 flash floods. “The government is yet to assess damages and how it rehabilitates them to address ordeals faced by the population of over 25,000 individuals in the valley,” he said.

Farooq Qureshi said that affected residents of the valley had decided to come onto to streets to lodge their protest.

“We are not against the rehabilitation of the central bridge washed away at MNJ road over Manor stream, but the government has put into use its entire machinery for that and we are being ignored entirely,” he said.