GILGIT: People affected by the Attabad lake staged a sit-in for the second day on Thursday, in a bid to persuade the authorities to listen to their demands.
Villagers displaced by the landslide-spurred lake are demanding that the compensation amount offered to them be increased. They claim the compensation that they have been offered is not enough to build a house.
Protesting villagers camped out on the Attabad lake spillway for hours, endangering their lives. At least 200 villagers sat in tents and vowed to return to their destroyed homes instead of accepting the government’s compensation.
“The spillway is very dangerous as tons of water accumulated in this monstrous lake keep exerting pressure on it. So it can burst at anytime,” said an official. After the landslide struck Attabad, experts said that 37 villages downstream are too dangerous to live in unless the lake is trained.
More than 25,000 people have been shifted to safer places after the landslide, but efforts to drain the lake have proved unsuccessful.
“Their sit-in continues but without success,” an official said on Thursday. “We don’t know if any breakthrough has happened or not in higher circles,” he said of talks reportedly taking place in Gilgit.
Officials said the force commander of Gilgit-Baltistan also met a delegation from Hunza and urged them not to resort to protests to voice their demands.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 9th, 2010.
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