Roads and tracks washed away by monsoon floods in the Kaghan and Manoor valleys of Mansehra district are being rebuilt (Dawn).
What has been done
An alternative track has been rebuilt at Rati Galli, in the Barawai area, restoring access to the lake track. Work continues on arteries and tracks along the streams in both valleys.
The central road project in Manoor Valley is budgeted at over Rs600 million. MPA Munir Hussain Lughmani, from Balakot tehsil, approved special funds.
Who this affects
Dozens of villages across both valleys. Residents had been unable to move patients to health facilities while the routes were cut.
The order of the reasons given
The benefits cited in the reporting are, first, that tourists can again reach the lakes, and second, that farmers in upper Kaghan — a pea and tomato growing area — can get produce to markets in Hazara and beyond.
Both are real. But the fact that mattered most was in the middle of the story: for the period the roads were gone, a sick person could not be carried out. A mountain road is a health service before it is a tourism asset, and reconstruction arguments in Pakistan routinely put that third.
The wider position
This is one district’s repair. Japan signed a $16.4 million grant on 10 September to strengthen a single Indus embankment in Larkana, and this newspaper noted then that Sindh’s 2022 flood reconstruction framework was never fully funded.
What is not established
No completion date has been given, no total damage estimate for the two valleys has been published, and no figure has been reported for how many villages remain cut off.
