Farmers ask govt to ease lockdown, reopen Kaghan valley road

MANSEHRA: The farmers in Kaghan valley have demanded the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to ease lockdown and reopen Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad road to traffic so that they cultivate various crops in the valley.

“We have to take seeds, fertilisers and other necessities into upper parts of Kaghan valley for sowing but because of blockade of main MNJ road to traffic for the last almost six-month, we couldn’t cultivate our fields as yet,” Zeeshan Adil, a grower, told reporters in Balakot on Wednesday.

A group of farmers from upper parts of Kaghan valley, led by Adil, said that usually the road was cleared to all sort of traffic after cutting glaciers and removing landslide up to Babusar Top till early May. However, the main artery couldn’t even be cleared to traffic up to Battakundi because of the Covid-19 emergency this year, he added.

“We couldn’t cultivated our fields of potatoes, peas and other crops marketed internationally for their test as yet and if this road is not cleared to traffic within next couple of days, thousands of peasant families would suffer the brunt of it,” said Adil.

He said that in that the people of Kaghan valley settled in part of Hazara move back to their native villages after the end of winter and start collection exotics species of herbs and shrubs and market them in Rawalpindi and Lahore for import. “But this process is yet to start as people couldn’t reach high mountainous parts of valley because of the blockade of road. We collect mushroom widely grown in valley and sold for Rs12, 000 per kg in markets and wild-garlic and other such exotic wild herbs but this time we couldn’t even initiate collecting these shrubs,” he added.