Boat owners ‘fleecing’ Hunza passengers

People affected by a ‘landslide’ formed lake at Hunza accused private boat owners of fleecing passengers.

GILGIT: People affected by a ‘landslide’ formed lake at Hunza have accused private boat owners of fleecing passengers travelling between Gojal and Hunza. They said that the authorities had failed to mend two broken boats lying at the bank of the lake for the past two months.

“Two boats belonging to the National Disaster Management Authority have been lying broken and no one is interested in getting them repaired for the convenience of the poor,” Murad Ali, a trader hailing from Hunza, told The Express Tribune on Friday.

“We had been provided free travel initially but after the withdrawal of that facility the woes of the passengers multiplied as the fee charged to travellers for one way travel ranges between Rs250 and Rs300,” he said. At the time operators were demanding Rs400 per person citing reasons of price hike especially in petroleum products.

On January 4, a massive landslide had blocked the Hunza River, creating a lake that expanded beyond 23 kilometres over the months submerging five villages upstream. About 20 kilometres of the strategic Karakoram Highway was also submerged disconnecting about 25,000 people living in Gojal. The boat service via the lake turned out to be the only source of travel for the people living in Gojal along the China border.

A trader travelling frequently between Hunza and Gojal for business said that the people of Gojal and Hunza were enraged and that a protest against the government is looming large.

“It has become very difficult for us to commute now as we, the poor, already affected by floods and landslides cannot afford to spend so much money on travel,” said Mohammad Ibrahim, another resident of Shimahal village. He said that the voyage from Gojal to Hunza has also become risky as poor conditions of the boats coupled with underground jolts pose a danger to the fragile banks of the lake.

As a precautionary measure, the NDMA in June shifted 20,000 people from 36 villages downstream to safer places as the lake overflowed through the spillway, fearing an outburst of the spillway would lead to devastation in the villages.

“The threat of water bursting its banks is still there though people have been repatriated to their villages,” said a government official in Hunza, expressing hope that the gradual decrease in the water level in winter will ease the situation for the experts supervising the spillway in an attempt to further dig it down.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 3^rd, 2010.