Pakistan: Residents threaten to stage protests over jobs in Balakot hydropower project

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa [Pakistan], January 9 (ANI): The locals in Balakot town of Pakistan have threatened the authorities to stage protests if not recruited in the region's hydropower project, Dawn reported on Monday.
The protesters claimed to launch a street protest in the Mansehra District in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
They warned that if the government did not agree to their demand that locals be hired on the 300-megawatt Balakot hydropower project, they would stop the Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad (MNJ) motorway at Ayub Bridge.
"More than 1,000 local people have applied for employment in different cadres at the dam for many months but none of them has been appointed so far," Dawn quoted Mian Ashraf, a local as saying.
The elders and local representatives from the 48 village and neighbourhood councils of Balakot. Participants in the conference decided to close down MNJ Road at Ayub Bridge.
The president of the central traders' body in Balakot, Javed Iqbal, told the meeting that Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had accepted all demands of locals through his special assistant Ahmad Shah.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, the residents of Garhi Habibullah, a town and union council (an administrative subdivision) of Mansehra District in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan and the nearby localities demanded that the government send an ambulance to the region's sole civic hospital.
"This hospital has been providing healthcare services to the widely stretched Garhi Habibullah and even some union council of Abbottabad district but it is still without an ambulance," Dawn quoted Ishaq Abbasi, a social activist as saying.
Locals under the leadership of Abbasi threatened to protest in the streets if the government did not send an ambulance to the hospital.
Tariq Abbasi, another local, said they had met with the district health officer and apprised him of the situation, but he had yet to provide an ambulance to the hospital, according to Dawn. (ANI)