Mohmand jirga urges govt to fulfill demands

GHALLANAI: A jirga of the Khwezai tribes on Saturday urged the government and relevant departments to fulfill their demands or else they would launch a protest movement for their rights.

Convened in Ataa Bazaar under the banner of Da Khwezai Jirga to press for the resolution of longstanding demands, the elders put forward a list of 15 key demands.

The demands included the reopening of the Gorsal Road, shifting of all departments in the newly-built political compound, provision of full staff in schools and hospitals, implementation of the Lift Canal Scheme from the Kabul River, acceleration of construction work on the Gorsal Road, reopening of the Benazir Income Support Programme point, inauguration of the DSL exchange, appointment of staff at the electricity gridstation, establishment of a Rescue 1122 centre, local youth recruitment, and inclusion of area-specific development schemes and others.

Bezai Subdivision Nazim Bismillah Jan Rahimi, chairman Ibrahim Khan, president Bakht Biland, general secretary Niaz Wali Khan, Tafseer Mohmand, Malik Rustam, Ilyas Afzal, Azim Khan and others said that they represented thousands of residents in the border subdivision of Khwezai along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

They emphasized that repeated appeals had been made to senior authorities and local parliamentarians to address their grievances but to no avail.

They highlighted that the local hospital has expensive X-ray and ultrasound machines that are lying unused due to the absence of technical staff, and that there was no clean drinking water available in the facility.

Many schools in the region, the speakers complained, operateed with only a single teacher and several were completely non-functional. They also criticized the fact that only Mohmand’s Gorsal and Nawapas trade routes with Afghanistan remain closed, while other merged districts enjoy access.