MURREE: People of rural and suburbs of Murree here have demanded of the government to allocate special funds for maintenance and repair of broken and damaged link roads connecting rural areas with the city.
In interaction with media on Thursday, they said that a remarkable increase in road mishaps has occurred due to these broken roads causing loss of lives and damage to vehicles. “Several people have lost their lives during the last few years in traffic accidents due to pathetic condition of link roads,” they added.
The link road which connects more than five union councils of Murree besides suburbs was in dilapidated condition for almost three years. The link road was assembled in PML N last tenure to connect multi UCS people of Murree. Beside connecting many UCS like Potha, Sehar Bhagla Phagwari,Charyan road lead to Murree Expressway .
The local people said that they had lodged complaints on the citizen’s complaint portal and a number of applications have also been submitted with the Punjab Highways department for the repair of the route, but of no avail.
The shabby condition of road had created hardships for the residents to take their serious patients, especially elderly persons, women to the hospitals in the nativity, a notable of society Zafar Javed told this scribe.
“Large cracks appeared in the damaged portion of the road due to torrential rains few years back during Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government and public representatives were approached for funds to repair of road but of no use. Our school going children were suffering massively due to bad condition of road .In rainy season the patents have no option to abstain their little from school,” he said.
Many applications in this regard have been submitted with Punjab Highways department, however our all submissions were precluded at party-political dispute as the project was materialized during rule of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government, he revealed.
Another notable of the society Rafeq Mahmood said that after continuous refusal of their applications, local people raised funds on self-help basis and started repair of damaged road at their own. However, due to heavy land sliding, huge funds were require and government needs to contribute, he stressed.
Chairman Rifah Development Forum, Suffyan Abbasi said that the residents of five UCs were adversely affected due to damaged portion of the road causing nuisance for women, children and elderly people. He said that students get late to school besides tiredness due to poor condition of road. The authorities concerned should release desired funds for repairing the link road to ease the sufferings of locality; he said stressing the locals to launch joint and strong protest to get their demands fulfilled.
