PESHAWAR   -   Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday vis­ited flood-affected areas and also spoke to people in Kalam valley of the scenic Swat district, instill­ing a ray of hope in the area regarding an improve­ment of relief operations.

Apparently, the sour relations between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Centre seem to be a hurdle in the rescue and relief operation that is slow in the flood affected areas of the province so far.

So far, one helicopter, which is the official one of the KP chief minister, has been used for the rescue operations in Kalam and other areas of Swat.

In addition to visiting other flood-affected ar­eas on Wednesday, Shehbaz Sharif flew to the Ka­lam valley to meet with tourists who had been left there since the devastating floods on August 26. He gave them the assurance that the government would soon reunite them with their families in their native towns In Kalam, the prime minister also spoke with a few local elders and listened to their complaints, but they were not given the chance to openly ex­press their feelings. People are becoming more and more irate that the federal government left them in the lurch during the crisis.

They also anticipated that the prime minister would announce plans to restore the 35-kilometer stretch of road between Kalam and Bahrain that his older brother, previous prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif, had constructed in 2018 for a cost of Rs 10 billion, winning the support of the populace.

Reports suggest that the Army has now offered three helicopters for the rescue and relief oper­ation from today (Thursday) to evacuate people in various flood-hit areas of Swat, while Frontier Works Organization (FWO) is also taking its ma­chinery for initiating work on a steel bridge in Bah­rain to restore traffic and work on other routes.