Lowari Pass.

Byline: Siraj Ulmulk - Chitral

COMMUTERS suffer on a daily basis on the under construction (for 40 years) Lowari Pass connecting Chitral to the rest of Pakistan. Many people in our country know of the 8.6km Lowari tunnel but few know that in heavy snowfall vehicles from Chitral cannot even get to this high tunnel.

On Jan 7, after waiting for help for over 12 hours, the commuters had to abandon their journey and return to Chitral.

The contract work for building a seven-kilometre vital portion of this road on the Chitral side of the tunnel had been given to contractors in March 2017 at an unbelievable cost of over 200 crores. The work was to be completed in March 2019 but there is no sign of this work being completed by March 2020 or even March 2021. Such is the way contracts are given and supervised in remote areas of our country.

It is easy for contractors in their rejoinder to say 'quality of work completed so far has been satisfactorily approved and duly verified from time to time by the National Highway Authority'. We all know what 'satisfactorily approved' and 'duly verified' mean in our country...