CHITRAL, Sept 3: Of the two dozen schemes of protection walls construction along Chitral River, the irrigation department could not complete even a single scheme so far though the contracts were awarded in February this year.

Keeping in view the devastation caused by high flood in Chitral River, which inundated several villages last year, the government had planned to build protection walls to stop the river water from entering the villages across the valley.

Sources said that the irrigation department had held the tendering process of the schemes in Peshawar instead of Chitral and awarded the contracts to non-local contractors, who could not complete the works during the past seven months.

A contractor, requesting anonymity, said that the non-local contractors, who had obtained the contracts of majority of the projects, had sublet the schemes to local contractors, most of whom had no experience and financial capacity for preliminary investment to carry out work on the sites.

He said that the work could not be started on more than half of the projects by May when snow on the mountains started melting and the river was in high flood. As a result of the sudden rise of water, the work could not be completed, he added.

The residents of various villages complained that the slow work on the projects had exposed the villages to flood because the water could easily enter the villages as the banks had been excavated and their heights had been lowered for erecting the protection walls.

They said that it was the good fortune of the low-lying villages that the river did not rise to the last year's level otherwise many villages would have been devastated.

The villagers said that the unusual flood of the last year had brought sediments with it in large mass and had heightened the level of the river, making the nearby localities vulnerable to floods.

The villages of Jinali Koch, Sarghoz and Grain Lusht were partially damaged by the river water and it is astonishing to note that no protection wall has been planned for the villages.