Naran road reopening nears as snow clearance begins on MNJ route

MANSEHRA: Naran, the commercial centre of Kaghan Valley, is expected to reopen to visitors as work is under way to remove snow and glaciers from the Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad (MNJ) Road and restore traffic on the route.

The National Highway Authority began the clearance operation last week to reopen the road link between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan. Traffic on the route had remained suspended since November last year after the season’s first snowfall in Kaghan Valley.

Hussain Deen, chairman of the Kaghan Hoteliers Association, said traffic between Naran and the rest of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was likely to resume within the next couple of days after staying closed for nearly six months.

Officials, however, said that although machinery was actively engaged in cutting through glaciers and removing snow, complete restoration of traffic could still take another four to five weeks.

Hotel owners have started returning to Naran to reopen their businesses and prepare for the arrival of tourists. At the same time, roads leading to Lake Saiful Muluk and other tourist spots are still blocked because of heavy snow and landslides.

A resident said snowfall this winter from the valley up to Naran and onward towards Babusar Top was lighter than in previous years, which helped authorities clear the MNJ Road up to Naran in less time.

Police posts in Basal, Plundrain, Soach, Lake Road, Battakundi and Jalkhad have not yet been reactivated for the safety of passengers and tourists travelling within Kaghan Valley and between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan. Officials said the police station currently functioning in lower Kaghan Valley would soon be shifted to Naran, while other posts would be restored gradually as snow and landslides are cleared from the road.

Mammography service launched at KATH

Separately, the King Abdullah Teaching Hospital has launched mammography services, becoming the first tertiary healthcare facility in Hazara division to offer the service to women with breast cancer.

Medical Superintendent Jawad Majeed Swati said KATH was the first public-sector tertiary healthcare facility in the division, and the second institution in Hazara after the Institute of Nuclear Medicine, Oncology and Radiotherapy in Abbottabad, to provide mammography services to women patients from the upper parts of Hazara division.

He said Saudi Arabia, which reconstructed the hospital after the 2005 earthquake, had also provided consignments of surgical instruments and equipment worth more than Rs2 billion.

Mr Swati said the hospital had now installed almost all of the supplied equipment, including mammography, MRI, CT scan and ultrasound machines, as well as more than a dozen dialysis machines, to improve treatment and diagnostic services.

He said patients from Mansehra, Battagram, Torghar and the three Kohistan districts had previously gone to the Abbottabad institute for treatment. According to Mr Swati, such patients are now being treated and hospitalised at KATH instead of being referred to Abbottabad.

He added that free medicines and diagnostic services were being provided to hospitalised patients under the Sehat Sahulat Programme.