No road link, Chowari villagers in Himachal carry patients on their back

Rajiv Mahajan

Nurpur, June 15

Hundreds of residents of Priyungal and Khabbar villages of Banet gram panchayat in Chowari subdivision of Chamba district are facing hardships due to the lack of road connectivity. In case of medical emergencies, Priyungal villagers have to walk five or six kilometres and Khabbar villagers have to tread a 2-km kutchha bumpy path to reach the Banet link road.

In such a situation, locals have no option but to carry a patient on their back to reach the link road, from where they hire a taxi to reach the Civil Hospital at Chowari. For this 5-km distance, poor villagers have to shell out Rs 300.

As per information, only two buses ply on this rural route. Without even basic development in these two villages, over 350 residents have been a victim of the apathy of successive state governments. There is no medical facility available here, due to which people have to rush to the Chowari Civil Hospital even for minor ailments.

Villagers Karnail Singh, Rakesh Kumar, Guro Devi, Anita, Pankaj, Padma, Koushlya Devi and Balwan Singh, lament that in the absence of a road connectivity, they face hardships. They say that a resolution demanding road connectivity was submitted to the state government over 15 years ago by the then gram panchayat but the issue of forest clearance for road construction had not been addressed so far.

“Road connectivity has become a distant dream for the residents of these villages,” they rue.

Bobby Thakur of Priyungal ward says that most of the rural areas in the Bhattiyat Assembly constituency are located remotely and have a tough terrain, making the lives of locals miserable. He appeals to Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur to formulate a special rural infrastructure development plan to provide basic amenities in the area. “Taking patients and expectant mothers during an emergency at night to the Civil Hospital at Chowari is a challenging task,” he says. Meanwhile, Bhattiyat MLA Vikram Jaryal refused to comment on the issue.