Islamabad - The benefit of under-construction Hazara Motorway would undoubtedly be enormous for the prosperity of people of Pakistan.

Yet, it left a bad taste for the local populace living nearby on both sides of the main artery that would eventually connect Pakistan’s deepsea Gwadar Port with China.

The areas falling within the section two of Burhan-Havalian project in Haripur district presents an odd situation for the local residents as the contractor who has built this section of the motorway turned the picturesque two valleys one located in the village Mang and other in the Rajpur village into barren land.

The contractor had taken out the precious raw material (barrow) of international quality from these two villages on payment of nominal compensation to the local farmers. Now, they are beating their chests because they are feeling cheated by the contractor.

They have a list of their grievances against the contractor and the National Highway Authority (NHA), the executing agency of the multi-billion rupees project.

Some of them who approached this correspondent and alleged that the ‘greedy’ contractor had taken out more barrow than the agreed quantity with the poor small landowners, a serious safety hazard.

Instead of adopting modern excavation means the contractor turned the barrow sites into deep ditches. The contractor has declined to restore these sites.

They blamed the contractor by employing insane methods in excavation of barrow and massively destroyed the settings of their lands rendering them useless for agriculture purpose because of looming danger of erosion in the entire area in wake of any heavy rain.

“We have been exploited by the contractor who had destroyed our meagre means of livelihood,” remarked one of the victims.

The affected local residents in the two villages also accused the contractor of denying them to get documents of their lands by influencing the officials of revenue department. They said some of them sought to move to the courts for judicial relief but the contractor with help of some local influential people as well as officials of the revenue department are creating hurdles in their way to seek justice through courts.

On the other hand when contacted National Highway Authority Project Director Fayyaz informed that the contractor AM Associates is bound to restore these sites as the department has already directed the contractor to fulfil the obligation by restoring and rehabilitating these barrow sites. “This is not only caused a safety hazard but also caused enormous environmental damage in the area,” Fayyaz said.

When asked whether his department had included Corporate Social Responsibility (CRS) in the contract agreement with the contractor, the NHA official said that contractor is bound to fulfil all his obligations.