KP govt floats options for completing work on New Balakot City project

MANSEHRA: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has floated three options for the completion of the New Balakot City project on which work has been suspended for the past four years.

The then president General (r) Pervez Musharraf inaugurated work on the housing project in 2007 to resettle survivors of the red zone in Balakot, which was destroyed in the 2005 earthquake. The proposals or options came to light during the visit of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Secretary Amjad Ali Khan to the site of the New Balakot City on Sunday.

The chief secretary was accompanied by KP’s Secretary Agriculture Jamil Ahmad Khan and Deputy Commissioner of Mansehra Iqbal Hussain.  Amjad Ali Khan arrived in Mansehra to tackle the current situation, which is creating embarrassment for the federal and KP governments due to the inordinate delay in the completion of the mega project.

The chief secretary was briefed by Iqbal Hussain about the current status of the housing project at a meeting that was also attended by representatives of the Works and Communication Department, police, Forest Department and other stakeholders. No representative of the Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority (Erra), which is the main stakeholder and presents the federal government, was present at the meeting.

Iqbal Hussain told the meeting that the housing project was inaugurated in 2007 to relocate the residents of Balakot and Garlat after an international team of geologists and seismologist declared Balakot dangerous for living. Speaking on the occasion, Chief Secretary Amjad Ali Khan asked Iqbal Hussain to take up the three options with Erra for completion of the housing project.

Amjad Ali Khan said that work on the Sector-A, which was disputed, should be left until development work in other sectors was completed or sector-A should be excluded from the project and a new locality should made its part from an adjoining area.

The sources privy to the briefing said that it was also discussed at the meeting that that if the disputed land, which was acquired for the project, was returned to the landowners then the money spent on its development thus far would also be recovered from them with interest. It may be recalled that two people were killed in an exchange of fire between law-enforces and local landowners in 2008. The sources said that the chief secretary rushed to Mansehra after the federal and KP governments blamed each other for delay in the completion of the project.

A large number of protesters from Balakot gathered outside the residence of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan in Islamabad last month and sought his help for completion of the project.

Erra, which is responsible for execution the mega housing project, has been paying rent of the machinery to contractors for the last three years. “We have been receiving rent of machinery without doing any work for the last many years as per our contract with Erra,” said an employee of a construction company.

According to him, the developmental work in Sector-A comprising 2700 kanal was 50 percent developed as road, sewerages lines were completed. “It would be a big blow to this housing project being development to settle almost 100,000 families of the red zone if the 2700 kanal land is excluded from it,” he added.