The Kaghan Development Authority (KDA) has reopened the Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad (MNJ) road for all kinds of traffic one month ahead of schedule.
The opening of the road comes at a fitting time as KDA is expecting a boom in the tourism industry, which was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If there is no calamity and weather goes well, we expect a tourism boom in the valley during this season, as we have cleared the MNJ road to traffic till Batakundi one month ahead of its scheduled time,” KDA inspector, Moazzam Khan, told Dawn.com.
Following heavy snowfall last year, the MNJ road was closed for traffic, hampering the tourism activities in Naran and Kaghan.
Before the snowfall, the hospitality industry had suffered due to the COVID-induced lockdowns.
“The work on reopening of the MNJ road beyond Batakundi is well in progress, and traffic between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan would resume as the rest of the portion of MNJ road has been cleared up to Babusar Top,” Khan said.
He noted that the tourism activities in Kaghan valley, which usually resume in mid-May, have already begun, thanks to the clearance of the main road up to Naran earlier this month.
President of the hoteliers association in Kaghan valley, Seth Matiullah, told Dawn that the hospitality industry faced a crunch during the past couple of years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Thousands of employees related to the tourism industry were laid off as we had no money to pay their salaries.”
However, he believed that they would be able to carry out their business throughout the season without any hindrance, with an influx of visitors on Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha.
“We have not seen such an opportunity during the last decade,” he added.