ISLAMABAD, March 13: People, mostly women, children and the sick, remain stranded for days in Peshawar while going to Chitral which is cut off from the rest of the country owing to the closure of Lowari pass after mid-December.

When the 10,500-foot-high pass connecting the valley with other parts of the country closes, PIA Fokker flights become the only source of transportation for the people of the district.

However, the national flag carrier, which operates 11 flights a week on the route, neither increases the number during the period to cope with the rush of passengers nor compensates for the flights cancelled due to bad weather. On average, half of the scheduled flights on the route are cancelled in winter.

For the last ten years, the people of the district have been using the Kunar-Nawa pass route through Afghanistan to travel in and out of the area. The arduous journey through the jeep track takes over 20 hours. Women and children mostly do not use the route due to security concerns.

Talking to Dawn at the PIA Peshawar office, a large number of passengers complained against unavailability of seats due to cancellation of flights and the indifferent attitude of the staff towards their sufferings.

Some of them said they had come from other cities including Karachi, Lahore, Quetta and Rawalpindi/Islamabad and were staying in hotels and visiting the office daily for many days but were turned away by the PIA staff.

They said they had reserved seats on the phone two to three weeks ago but when they reached the office to confirm their seats they were denied tickets on one pretext or the other.

They said the PIA office in Chitral had made some provisions to accommodate those needing urgent tickets including patients and students.

But this practice was not followed in the airlines’ Peshawar office where the staff allotted the tickets on personal connections.

“To get a PIA ticket on the Peshawar-Chitral route in winter is a daunting task for which you have to have connections with high government officials and even members of parliament,” said a patient at the PIA office in Peshawar.

The people demanded that the government should operate extra flights on the route in winters to solve the communication problems of the district until the construction of the Lowari tunnel.