The protesters said the NHA has also failed to reconstruct a water channel destroyed during the construction work on the tunnel. They have threatened to block the main road leading to Chitral if the NHA fails to meet their demands.
Addressing the rally, local elders said that during construction work on the Lowari Tunnel in 2006 the NHA had destroyed a water channel that used to irrigate crops.
They said their lands could no longer be irrigated. They said the NHA had signed an agreement with the affected people for reconstructing the channel by March 2009. They claimed the NHA had agreed to compensate farmers for their crops till March 2009 and would continue to pay compensation for crops if it failed to rebuild the channel by March 2009.
Lowari Tunnel is an 8.75km long under-construction road tunnel having a 7.1m diameter and situated in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan connecting Dir and Chitral Valley.
The 10,500ft (3,200m) high Lowari top is closed for traffic for most part of the year and consequently Chitral remains virtually inaccessible during the winter; the tunnel, which will facilitate all-weather transportation, will reduce the current 14-hour drive from Chitral to Peshawar by 50 per cent.
A South Korean construction company, Sambu JV, has been assigned the work on the tunnel. It is expected to be completed at a cost of USD 133M this year.
