Residents demand solution to longstanding issues

MANSEHRA: PTI has miserably failed to address core issues faced by residents of Balakot and its adjoining areas.

“The Supreme Court in January 2019 had ordered both the federal and provincial governments to remove hurdles in the way of Rs13 billion New Balakot City housing project and reconstruct the infrastructure destroyed in the 2005 earthquake. However, nothing practically has been done 20 months after the verdict,” stated Sheraz Mehmood Quraishi, a social activist on whose writ petition the apex court had issued the ruling. He said that Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar had ordered the federal government to release an amount of Rs1 billion for the development of the New Balakot City housing project but the amount was not yet released and the Rs13 billion project was in the doldrums even after its ground-breaking in 2007. Meanwhile, the residents of Balakot have decided to launch an agitation against the federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments.The decision was taken at a meeting, attended among others by the president of local traders’ union Javed Iqbal and local elders M Maroof, Ashraf and Tahir Khan. They decided to stage protests and also move the apex court if the government didn’t release the allotment letters to more than 5,000 families who had been affected by the 2005 earthquake and are still living a miserable life in the prefabricated shelters.