Jawzjan protestors bury symbolic road corpse

SHIBERGHAN (Pajhwok): Civil society activists in northern Jawzjan province buried a symbolic corpse of a non-asphalted road in Shiberghan, the provincial capital, on Monday.

The protestors said work on the road was launched in 2014 with a stipulated two years timescale, but five years have passed, the road is yet to completed.

Qadir Folad, one of the protestors, said the 60-meter wide road in Shiberghan city had been asphalted less than 20 percent.

“We blame the contracted company and the local and central governments for their negligence, we had protested in the past too about it, but today we took funeral of the road in a symbolic movement,” he said.

He said they would extend their protests and block roads to Jawzjan province if officials continued neglecting the project.

Mualvi Shah Waliullah Jawzjani, a cleric, accused local officials of incompetency and said, “The officials who are responsible for implementation of the project have turned cruel as they do not care about the voices of poor and needy people.”

“We are forced to protest against non-implementation of this project because we bear many problems,” he added.

Halima Mehryar, another protestor, pointing to the governor, said, “If you cannot implement this project, then please resign and let someone able to do this job.”

However, Lotfullah Azizi, Jawzjan governor, rejected the claims and said, “We have put enough pressure on the company implementing this project, but the company has very low capacity for doing its responsibility.”

He said the provincial council members and other representatives of the province had previously visited the Ministry of Public Works and demanded their attention to the project.

Azizi said the contracted company claims they have not been given enough money to execute the project.

He said more than one billion afghanis was allocated for the project and the money was increased by 200,000 afghanis for some extra activities in the scheme. The company is responsible to carry its job according to the contract, he said. He hoped the project will be completed in spring, March of 2020.

Eng. Attaullah Kargar, head of Public Works Department of Jawzjan, said that the 15 kilometers long road will be asphalted in four lines and it would cost 1.3 billion afghanis.

He said work on the project was resumed in 2016 after a two-year stoppage and it was suspended again for some technical problems in the map of the road.

He said that problems in the project map had now been resolved and work on it would be started again.

mds/ma