MANSEHRA: The Balakot tehsil council on Thursday unanimously adopted a resolution seeking the immediate start of classes at Mansehra city`s only degree college for girls.

`The college`s building was inaugurated last year but classes have yet not begun there due to non-appointment of teachers and other staff members,` councillor Liaquat Khassana told the council at its session chaired by convener Abdul Qudus. The college had destroyed in the 2005 earthquake and was rebuilt af terwards.

The council also adopted a resolution seeking the renaming of the toll tax collected from visitors to Kaghan valley.

The resolution demanded that Kaghan development fee be called Balakot development fee.

Tehsil nazim Rustam Khan resented the absence of the heads and representatives of 14 departments from the session despite formal intimation and asked the council`s convener to begin inquiry against them under the Local Government Act 2013. He said the government had released Rs20 million for the reopening of the link roads in remote parts of the tehsil due to landslides.

`The link roads, which were blocked by landslides due to heavy rains and snowfall in the tehsil, will reopen soon. The district government received Rs20 million from the provincial government of late for it,` he said.

On the occasion, another councillor Ghulam Rabbani complained about the alleged anomalies about the recent appointments to the Tehsil Municipal Administration and insisted the exercise to appoint the people was carried out in a `secret` manner.

Some councillors complained the tehsil headquarters hospital hadn`t reconstructed since it was washed away by flash floods in 2011 to the misery of the local residents needing medical care. They regretted the reconstruction hadn`t taken place despite the sanctioning of funds.

GRID STATION: PML-N MNA Mohammad Safdar on Thursday said the construction of a grid station in Mansehra would help the issues of loadshedding and low voltage in Hazara division and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. The lawmaker told a public meeting in Shaukatabad area here that work on the grid station was in final stage and would be over in due course of time to the benefit of the entire region.

He said the federal government was striving for the development of the country`s backward areas by executing mega and micro development projects.

Mr. Saf dar said the Siren right canal project would be executed in Mansehra soon to irrigate barren lands of the district and thus, bringing development to the region.

`We (federal government) want to irrigate almost all barren and other lands in Mansehra,` he said.

FRAUD SUSPECT HELD: The anti-corruption establishment has arrested a patwari on the charge of a fraud and said he would be produced before the court of law today (Friday) for physical remand.

ACE circle head Adalat Khan told reporters here that under the law, a citizen had to pay a total fee of Rs136,000 for transferring land in his or her name but patwari Tahir Nawaz illegally received Rs60,000 for entering that mutation deed in his records. He said the anti-corruption department would produce the suspect in the court of law today (Friday) to secure his physical remand.