PESHAWAR: According to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), the death toll from the recent severe rains and snowfall in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa increased to 36 on Monday. It further stated that 43 persons were hurt in the incident.
According to the officials, minors made up 22 of the injured and 25 of the dead. There were eight confirmed deaths and seven confirmed injuries in Bajaur; four confirmed deaths and ten confirmed injuries in Malakand; seven confirmed deaths and two confirmed injuries from Swat; six confirmed deaths from Khyber; three confirmed in Peshawar; three in Lower Dir; one each in Lakki Marwat and Lower Chitral; and two in Mardan.
In a related incident, on Sunday night in Gaji village of Gadoon Amazai in the Swabi district, a child died and his mother was hurt when the roof of their home fell as a result of heavy rain. From the rubble, locals removed the deceased and the injured, taking them to a hospital.
46 homes were completely demolished and 346 had some damage, according to the PDMA. It stated that the impacted households were getting compensation checks from the local government.
According to PDMA, 25 of the dead were minors.
According to the report, Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur gave the go-ahead for the officials to start working right once to clear the clogged roadways.
On Tuesday, the authorities in Bajaur made the decision to begin a damage assessment survey in order to compensate the owners of homes that were destroyed or severely damaged.
According to officials, deputy commissioner Mohammad Anwarul Haq presided over a meeting of the district administration and PDMA when the decision to begin the survey was made.
The representatives informed Dawn that the survey teams would be led by the corresponding tehsildars in each of the seven tehsils.
In Bajaur, at least 120 residences were either destroyed or damaged, according to sources in the district administration.
On Monday, however, political activists and local elders in the Kalam area of Swat denied the district administration’s assertions that it had allowed cars back on the Bahrain-Kalam and other connecting roads.
Speaking to reporters at the Swat Press Club, Malik Ghulam Ali, Habibullah Saqib, Habibullah Saqiqui, and Rehmat Din Siddiqui, the chairman of the Malakand Peace Jirga, criticized the district administration for not reopening the roads that were closed by a lot of snowfall.
The district administration’s statements that the roads had been cleared of snow were refuted, according to the elders.
It was reported that the closure of the highways for the past four days had caused inconvenience to both locals and visitors from various regions of the nation.
They said that no plans existed for getting patients to hospitals. They requested that rather than making “verbal claims” in the media, the commissioner of Malakand, the deputy commissioner of Swat, and other pertinent officials take concrete action to open the routes to traffic.
In order to facilitate the transportation of food and medications to the nearby markets, the elders instructed the necessary departments to remove snow from the main Madyan-Bahrain-Kalam route as well as all other connecting roads.
If the roads weren’t cleared right away, they issued a warning to take to the streets.
