PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Wednesday bifurcated Kohistan district in Upper and Lower Kohistan , raising the number of districts in the province to 26. This was announced by advisor to the chief minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) Department, Maulana Abdul Haq at a news conference at the Chief Minster’s Secretariat. He said the new district of Lower Kohistan was created to make the mountainous administrative unit manageable and accessible to the people of the far-flung areas.Maulana Abdul Haq said that Kohistan was a large district covering an area of 7,492 square kilometres and each day the people from the far-flung areas had to spend around Rs8 million to travel to Dassu, the headquarters of the district. “They have to spend over Rs20.5 million every month and Rs280 million annually to avail services at Dassu. Besides, they spent precious time to travel hundreds of kilometres to the district headquarters,” he said. He said the chief minister approved the bifurcation of the Kohistan that earlier consisted of four tehsils i.e. Dassu, Pattan, Palas and Kandia.The notification issued today (Wednesday) has created Lower Kohistan district consisting of Pattan and Palas, which are further divided into 23 union councils having a population of 4,73000.
