1.67b afs projects launched in Nangarhar last year

JALALABAD (Pajhwok): Fifty different projects worth 1.67 billion afghanis were launched last solar year in eastern Nangarhar province and 21 of them have been completed and put into service, an official said Sunday.

Nangarhar Urban Development director Abdul Qahar Haidari told a press conference in Jalalabad that the completed projects included 21 mosques while another 22 mosques were rehabilitated last year with technical support from the Hajj and Religious Affairs Department.

He added their department’s last year’s revenue stood at four million afghannis.

Qahar said 4,000 homes were constructed during the year for newly returned refugees at a cost of $25 million based on the president’s order.

He said maps of townships for teachers, martyrs’ families and carpet weavers had been completed in Kama and Koz Kunar districts and practical work on distributing the plots had begun.

A survey for constructing a new road from Surkhab Bridge to Saracha Bridge area was underway and another survey for a 13-kilometer road from Behsud Bridge to Abdulkhel area had been completed and dispatched to the Public Works Ministry for practical enforcement, he said.

He said another survey was underway to construct a “new Jalalabad City” in 21,000 acres of land from Barikab to Pavi-Kando area.

The urban development director also said strategies about shifting warehouses from inside the police headquarters and the central  jail elsewhere and removing illegal bus stands in Jalalabad, the provincial capital, had been finalized and would be implemented soon.

He said a map of unplanned homes in Jalalabad had been prepared and the sketch of Qayyam-un-Khadim Township had been twice reviewed. The official said plots in the Qasimabad township were being allotted to those having ownership documents.

The urban development director also said their plan about preventing two thousand acres of land from being grabbed in Surkh Diwal area had been sent to the governor’s house.

Green belts were created along the Jalalabad-Torkham highway and homes in the way demolished.

Pk/ma