Announced last year, PWD office yet to come up at Chuwari

Rajiv Mahajan

Nurpur, December 31

The government is yet to fulfil people’s demand of opening the divisional offices of the Public Works Department (PWD) and the Irrigation and Public Health (IPH) Department at Chuwari in the neighbouring Bhatiyat constituency of Chamba district.

Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur had announced a PWD divisional office at Chuwari on November 11 last year but nothing had been done so far.

Public Inconvenienced

Chamba, Dalhousie, Bharmour, Churah, Pangi, Salooni subdivisions have divisional offices of the PWD and the IPH Department. However, Bhatiyat subdivision doesn’t have these offices, and as a result locals face a lot of inconvenience.

Bhatiyat subdivision has been attached with the divisional offices of the PWD and IPH Department at Dalhousie. People have to travel 50 km to 70 km to get their works done. Their time and money are wasted even for petty departmental works. Resentment is brewing among local residents against successive governments ‘neglecting’ the constituency, which was upgraded to a subdivision in 1997 with its headquarters at Chuwari.

Local residents Sat Pal Thakur, Han Raj, Abhishek Chambial, Sanjay Kumar, Hitesh Bedi, Kanav Sharma, Ritesh Mahajan and Alam Singh lament that no government has fulfilled the long-standing demands of the people for a civil court and the divisional offices of the PWD and IPH Department, besides initiating work on the proposed depot of the Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC).

They say that the limits of Bhatiyat subdivision start from Hatli on the one side and Nainikhud on the other with a tough topography. “Travelling to Dalhousie is cumbersome, especially during the winter, time-consuming and expensive. The absence of the divisional offices of the PWD and the IPH Department is also hampering the execution of development works in the area,” they claim.

Kusum Dhiman, chairperson of Bhatiyat nagar panchayat, has urged the CM to accelerate development of the neglected Bhatiyat constituency and fulfil his public announcement for the PWD divisional office at Sihunta made over a year ago.