SIALKOT - Along BRB Daska Canal, the road linking Daska city and Mianwali Bangla, tehsil Pasrur is the most dilapidated one in the district, and notorious for everyday fatal accidents, it is learnt.
Recently a vehicle plunged into the canal which claimed the lives of all the members of a family as their car plunged into the canal but notables and dignitaries either in the assemblies or in the district administration are slumbering over the situation.
The road falls in the ambit of MPAs Rana Muhammad Afzal (PP-128), Mohsin Ashraf (PP-129) and Asif Bajwa (PP-130) and all of them belong to the ruling party. Even then, the people of Bharoke, Raja Ghaman, Salloke, Bherthan Wala, Haicher and Mianwali Bangla along with hundreds of villages linked to the road have been remained unattended for the last three decades.
According to the locals, the last patching of the road was done a decade ago thus the 10-feet road has decreased to 3 to 4 feet at most of the points. Abdul Majeed, a local, said that the road had taken lives of three members of his family and there are thousands of families in this area who have either faced fatal accidents or have given lives of their beloveds to the road.
When a heavy vehicle passes over a breached bank, road patches fall inside the canal taking the vehicles along sometimes. At it remains overcrowded, other side of the canal should also be constructed for a better traffic flow here, he demanded. Due to the pathetic situation, the people cannot maintain a safer speed that is why the road is the hub of decoits at nights for the last three decades, said Amanat Ali of Lorihki Goraya.
Daska is 15 miles from Mianwali Bangla and ridiculously it takes one and a half hours to reach one end from the other, said Iqbal, a van driver. There are at least 50 points on the road where two vehicles cannot pass each other while moving. Either of them has to stop off the road and then the other vehicle passes by also getting off the road on the other side, said Aslam, another driver.
At the advent of winter, the road gets covered with fog and as there is no streetlights, the people either fall into the canal or hit each other at nights. It runs along BRB canal till Bedian, Lahore and then Qasoor but there is no point where any barrier is present.
When contacted, DO Roads Rizwan Qamar said that roads in district Sialkot were unsatisfactory on the whole and district administration had not given the administration any funds for the last 5 months now for repair work. However, DCO Nadeem Sarwar pledged that he would visit the road soon and make an estimate for the patching of the road.
Meanwhile, MPA Bajwa said that he would go to the Punjab chief minister in a couple of days for allocation of funds to reconstruct the road. MPA Afzal said that he had a scuffle with X-EN Irrigation in DCO Sialkot’s meeting on the pathetic situation of canal banks on the road two months ago. “Recently, DCO Sialkot has written a letter to Secretary Irrigation for proper work in this regard,” he said.