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CHITRAL, Sept 02 (APP)::Besti Valley is a beautiful area on one side, on the other side, nature has also hidden a treasure of precious stones like emeralds in these mountains, from where precious stones worth billions of rupees come out, but despite this, the people of the area are poor.
The people of the area staged a protest rally for their legitimate rights and demanded the authorities to give them their legitimate rights.
According to the details, the area of Chitral is very beautiful because of its natural beauty, on the other hand, there is also a natural treasure of precious stones in these mountains, but despite the extraction of emerald stones worth billions of rupees from this mountain, the people of Basti valley are still very poor and have no employment or any sort of benefit from such mining.
The people of Basti held a protest rally against the injustice of the non-local leaseholder and blocked the roads for all kinds of traffic.
Addressing the protest rally, the speakers said, “A non-local leaseholder has taken a lease in the name of some cheap mineral in the mountains of Besti Valley, but the emerald precious stone comes out from here and so far they have extracted an emerald worth a hundred billion rupees.”
They said that the leaseholder had initially entered into a written agreement with them that they would pay them royalty and service charges as well as repair roads and bridges in the area damaged by their trucks, but now they will go back on their word.
The speakers said, “The leaseholders do not even employ local youths and because of the non-local workers, our Chadar and the Wall are also affected because often our women take the cattle to the fields.”
They said, “The leaseholders in these mountains do gunpowder blasting, due to which the wildlife from this area also migrated to Afghanistan and the glaciers that have been in our area for hundreds of years are also melting rapidly, which is having a very negative impact on climate change.”
The speakers alleged that the contractor had taken the lease in the name of common and cheap minerals, but emeralds and other precious stones were being extracted from there. They suspected that the collusion of the leaseholder with a few officers and people of the institution might be causing damage to the national treasury. Instead of leaving, they pay the government tax for it or take it secretly.
The speakers said, “When we demand our legitimate rights, the leaseholder threatens us and replies negatively that they have big hands and no organization can act against them.”
The affected people asked the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice of Peshawar High Court, the Provincial Chief Minister, and relevant authorities of the Minerals Department and appealed to the competent institutions to conduct an investigation in that regard and these affected people were being given their legitimate rights and royalty.
The water here had also been poisoned due to the blasting in the mining mountain because most of the water comes from the springs in the middle of the mountains where these people use gunpowder and by using this poisoned water, their health and Life was also in serious danger.