New Balakot City project issue being solved: official

MANSEHRA: Prime Minister Imran Khan has called the meeting of all stakeholders and heads of the relevant public departments on October 18 to set the modalities for the settlement of the New Balakot City housing project issue once and for all.

An official letter issued by the Prime Minister’s House directed the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) to submit details of consultative meetings held by it with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister, district administration and department concerned on the New Balakot city housing project being developed at the Bakrial area to settle the 2005 earthquake-hit families.

The then president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, had performed the groundbreaking of NBC in 2007 with an initial cost of Rs11 billion. And now the cost of the project has reached around Rs15 billion. Additional deputy commissioner, Muqbool Hussain, visited Balakot and met with the 2005 earthquake survivors and asked them to suspend their ongoing agitation as the prime minister called a meeting to discuss the New Balakot city. “The government wants to settle the New Balakot city housing project once and for all and that is why the prime minister called the meeting of NDMA and other stakeholders in Islamabad,” Hussain said.

Maulana Qazi Khalilur Rehman, the prayer leader of the central mosque in Balakot after the meeting with Hussain told reporters that the prime minister had taken notice of the issue and so that they should suspend the scheduled protests.

“We are optimistic that the prime minister would ensure the settlement of this issue and allotment of plots to the affected families would shortly be initiated,” he added.