Baltistan: the voice of young blood regarding Skardu road is roaring once again to connect them via a tunnel instead of long zig-zag drama. But the monopolies are using their iron fist to get in done that way for the sake of their personal and short term benefits. Money bank, to benefit few villages at the cost of the sufferings of whole Baltistan and ultimately maintain their vote bank across the zig-zag route.
The benefit of this tunnel is multi-folded as this tunnel not only provides speedy connectivity to more than seven lac residents of Baltistan Division but also important from the strategic point of view as this route is the only road connecting the world highest border Siachen Glacier and Kargil border with rest of Pakistan. The most important point to be noted is that the human lives taken by the unfortunate road accidents in this area due to the blind turns, steep and hilly road is unimaginable and we know that no alternative and wealth can pay the cost of even a single human life.
From an economic point of view, it saves the extra fuel covering the extra 40 Kilometers heading towards the same destination by hundreds of thousands of vehicles even if we didn’t count the extra energy and time consumed in clearing the landslides on this road as this road is vulnerable to landslides. The agricultural products and thousands of tons of minerals mined here in the Baltistan region can easily be transported to the national market. It takes more than 4 days for a carriage truck to transport goods from Islamabad to Skardu thus making the price of the daily commodities higher than rest of the country as the shipping cost is high, so the tunnel will affect positively in this regard as well.
Though the tunnel construction is costly we can’t keep aside the long term benefits this tunnel.
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