Heavy snowfall: Govt urged to airdrop essential food supplies into Broghil

CHITRAL: The recent heavy snowfall has made life miserable for both humans and livestock in the remote Broghil Valley of Upper Chitral district.

The area located near Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor was already suffering from food shortages and other essentials and the latest snowfall has worsened the situation.

The snowfall, which continued across Chitral for two days during the last days of Ramazan, hit the Broghil Valley hard where three to four feet of snow has fallen, restricting the residents to their homes.

The snowfall also caused a severe shortage of food for livestock, including yaks, cows and goats.

Former Broghil Village Council chairman Ameen Jan Tajik told reporters via telephone that the condition in the valley was extremely serious. He said that without urgent government assistance, both human and animal lives were at serious risk due to food scarcity. He said that although the Upper Chitral district administration had managed to reopen the road up to the first village, Garam Chashma, the 12 villages beyond it had remained cut off since December last year, causing a severe shortage of essential supplies.

The citizen said that the rare heavy rains and floods during the past winter had damaged the grasslands used for storing fodder that left livestock without sufficient food for survival.