In several flood-ravaged areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the worst seems to have passed but difficulties remain.

Daily life is a struggle even as flood waters have receded and moved southwards, leaving in their wake a trail of deaths, destruction and, for the time being, literally no way out for many misery-stricken residents.

Recent monsoon rain-induced floods, which are estimated to have submerged a third of the country and claimed over 1,200 lives, have severed land routes in several areas.

But residents, sick and tired of waiting for the government, have taken it upon themselves to fix the roads with whatever they can find: wood, gravel and clay.

“If we wait for the government, it would take years for them to rehabilitate [the roads],” said Habibullah, a former nazim of the Kalam valley in Swat, while speaking to Dawn.com.

Habibullah is among some 200 locals who are repairing the road connecting Kalam to the Bahrain tehsil of Swat. A large section of the road was washed away when flood waters washed over it.

In the past, Habibullah recalls, it had taken the relevant authorities very long to restore land routes. “So, we have decided to start the work on a self-help basis and repair the road together with the use of small tools,” he said.

But even as he busies himself in the reconstruction of the main road leading to the valley, he feels that time is running out.

“If the road remains blocked, a shortage of food and medicines is imminent. People in the upper areas will die and the government will be responsible.”

The urgency was also not lost on Zubair Torwali, a resident of Bahrain.

Torwali, a researcher of local languages, said because the people of the area were essentially cut off, they had little choice but to make the dangerous trek across mountains to access food.

“People fasten bags of food on themselves and climb [mountains] with ropes here in Bahrain, as there are no signs of roads or pedestrian paths, all of which have been washed away by floods,” he said.

Despite their attempt to repair the road themselves, they still urged the government to restore links so the flow of much-needed help and medicines could resume to the remote areas of Kalam and Bahrain.

Torwali stressed the need for sending medical teams to these areas, saying that flood victims there were in “dire need of the government’s and international assistance to be able to survive”.

The government should “rehabilitate roads, bridges and other structures on an emergency basis”, he added.

Kandia

In the Kandia tehsil of Upper Kohistan district, roads have suffered the same fate as those in Swat, and its citizens, much like the denizens of Kalam valley, have been patching a road up by themselves.

According to Hafeez Rehman, an educationist from Kandia, the main road in the tehsil has been washed away by rain-induced floods for the third time in a decade. This time, the residents have been cut off for about a week.

When Dawn.com spoke to him on Friday, Rehman, his cousins and others from his village were repairing the stretch of road at Thoti (pronounced Too-tee) for the second day.

“My cousins and I left home early in the morning and walked difficult, mountainous terrain to reach Thoti [to repair the road],” he said.

Rehman and his companions hope that they will be able to get the road enough for at least a pickup truck to travel on it so that food can be transported to the areas and patients can be shifted to hospitals.

By Friday, he said, they had managed to repair a 200-metre-long stretch of the road.

Another resident of Kandia, Ghulam Murtaza, told Dawn.com that while residents had started repairing the road in Thoti, the relevant authorities have begun repair work further ahead on the road closer to the Japan Bridge. Upper Kohistan Assistant Commissioner Hafiz Muhammad Waqar confirmed to Dawn.com that repair work had begun on that patch of the road.

Around 200 to 250 volunteers had joined hands to repair the road, Ghulam Murtaza said, recalling that they had done the same after the 2010 and 2016 floods.

“We are now hoping that we will complete the repairs within 10 to 15 days,” he said.

The timeline, however, was making elderly Mushtahir Khan jittery, who said many homes in the area had run out of food, and medicines were no longer available at basic health units.

Doctors, too, had left, he lamented, adding that the three-year-old daughter of an acquaintance had died of cholera in Jishvi village. The disease, he said, was spreading fast in the area after the floods, forcing people to shift elsewhere.

Dubair

The situation was not very different in the Dubair area of Lower Kohistan district.

Here, the locals of Mujh Gali village sought to restore a bridge link with an adjoining village, Gayan. The bridge was swept away when flood waters raged through Dubair river.

“The wooden suspension bridge will be completed in two days,” hoped Asad Ali, a resident of Mujh Gali village. He also shared a photograph with Dawn.com showing volunteers lifting a log over their shoulders.

Other residents have left their homes on foot in search of more livable conditions in areas such as Bisham, Swat and Mansehra.

On their journey, some are compelled to carry the frail elderly and children on their shoulders as they travel long distances over difficult terrain to reach the Karakoram Highway.

Javid Ali, a resident of Dubair Bala, said he was trying to rent a house in Swat and move there with his family as staying in his hometown would put his family at risk.

There was also the likelihood of a shortage of food and medicine, he said, adding that taking a patient to a hospital in case of an emergency seemed like an impossibility as the reconstruction of roads might take months.

He shared photos with Dawn.com of Dubair Bala locals — food bags tied to their waists — trekking through tough terrains on their way home.

“Life in Dubair Bala is at a standstill and people are going through mental stress because of it,” he said.

Sakhi Dad, also from Dubair Bala, had a similar tale to tell.

He spoke to Dawn.com on the phone while walking to Pattan, the district headquarters located along the Karakoram Highway at a distance of more than 20 kilometres from Dubair.

He said he was going to Pattan to buy food and medicines for his family and was accompanied by 20 to 25 others. “I have to walk for four to six hours to get something as basic as food for survival.”