KHYBER AGENCY: The residents and traders from Maidan area of Tirah valley of Khyber Agency have asked the government to expedite work on the Sheen Kamar and Dwatoi roads.
They complained the tribesmen had been facing immense problems for the last 10 years as they had to take a detour to Maidan by passing through Bara, Peshawar and Kohat. The traders said they faced problems in transporting vegetables, flour, ghee, sugar and fruit from various areas of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa including Kohat, Hangu, Peshawar and Sadda to Tirah valley of Khyber Agency.
A vegetable and fruit trader, Muhammad Usman Afridi, said militants belonging to two banned outfits, namely Lashkar-i-Islam of Mangal Bagh and Ansarul-Islam of Qazi Mehboobul Haq, had closed the main of Sheen Kamar and Dwatoi roads. They said it usually took them several hours to reach Peshawar from Tirah.
They lamented that the long detour and broken roads damaged the goods they transported from Orakzai and Kurram agencies to Tirah valley. To compound their problems, it also hiked the prices of the items due to transportation costs.
They said that if the Sheen kamar and Dwatoi roads were opened for traffic, it would facilitate thousands of tribespeople from upper and lower Tirah. The other major problem, they said, was the transportation of patients from their areas to Peshawar for treatment.
The serious patients invariably died on the way to the medical facility, they said.
