LANDI KOTAL: Residents of Bagh Maidan in Tirah valley have been facing acute shortage of drinking water despite official claims to have spent millions of rupees on a number of development schemes in the valley.

Mostly inhabited by Malakdinkhel tribe, people of Bagh Maidan rely for drinking on untested water of natural springs situated at quite a distance from their houses.

The residents said that they had enough water channels in the nearby hilly areas, but there were no storage facilities and distribution system in the area.

Local people bring water for their daily use on mules and pushcarts or in plastic buckets. They mostly rely on natural springs of Gullo Cheena, Narhaw Cheena, Barkhanak Cheena and Janta Gul Maina.

`These natural spring have sufficient water and it could be used if the government departments concerned built gravity schemes on it,` Mohammad Aslam, a local resident told this correspondent.

He said that a government department had some times ago started laying pipeline from these water channels up to their homes, but they then lef t the work halfway.

Israr Khan, another resident, said that little effort was required to put to use the water of these channels.

He said that storage tanks should be built in different localities to store water.

`Water from these channels gets polluted when mules are taken near them for filling water containers on their back,` he said. The residents insisted that they had made several requests to the authorities concerned for provision of clean drinking water, but to no avail.

GOLD SEIZED: The National Logistic Cell authorities on Friday seized 1.17 kilogrammes of gold from a Pakistani national at Torkham border. Officials said that Said Akbar, a resident of Peshawar, was intercepted at the scanner while returning from Afghanistan and during body search 1,176 grams of gold was recovered from his possession.

They said that Akbar was sent to Landi Kotal lock-up and the seized gold handed over to the custom of ficials.