Problem with Chakwal

I remember once I wrote about what forced me to leave my hometown. I talked about lack of opportunities and their costs.

If someone suffers from a heart stroke in Chakwal, then there is a great probability that they might not survive. There is almost no health facility in Chakwal to treat such patients. There is only one public sector DHQ Hospital in whole district and some small private sector filter clinics, mostly providing OPD or first aid type diagnosis. There is not a single qualified cardiologist nor any healthcare facility to perform basic echo-cardiography or angioplasty. 

And i have just scratched the surface, if someone has an ailment related to urinary system, then it is the unluckiest thing to have unfortunately, because there is no facility to treat such patients in Chakwal, neither you will find any qualified nephrologist or any urologist. There is one dialysis unit but that too is on and off functional.

If you can coup with such devastation, then you might think of securing a job or to do some business to earn livelihood. Since Chakwal is not an industrial town nor it has adequate water resources to cultivate cash crops, so one has to heavily rely on finding jobs in some other urban areas of country. 

Another issue is scarcity of higher education institutions in the area, only one university has been setup in recent past. Dilemma is, that most of the graduates have generic qualifications and that too are not up to the mark, resultantly they don’t qualify for good jobs and are most of the time discriminated based upon these factors. Unfortunately they are not been able to make a cut, resultantly aspirants end up with the only option to serve in armed defense forces. Chakwal has a long-standing reputation as a "martial area".

There is overall perception of backwardness due to these facts and it is true in a sense as this area is mostly neglected by government. Despite of having reputation of martial area and keeping in-view huge contributions by the people from this particular area in defence of nation, there is not any significant back office support military infrastructure like military hospitals or educational institutes in city. In my opinion people have the very right to earn such support facilities and this necessity must be provided in an honourable way. 

You cannot imagine how miserable is the travelling experience, to and on from Chakwal to other areas like Lahore or to just any other city in Pakistan. Travelling is necessity for the sake of healthcare and jobs and it is pretty awful. 

Thanks to the effort put in by some obnoxiously corrupt veterans, deplorable local politicians and so called elderly elite of the area; they have successfully ruined the transportation system and infact dismantled railway infrastructure, even roadways are in pathetic condition. 

All of the current and past leadership, local politicians and so called elderly elite are in transportation business; and they have been plundering for quite a long time. 

There is bestowed interest in this plight because this is their extremely profitable source of money and they will never wish to change this. There is no customer service or call of courtesy to the user, mainly because they know that passengers don’t have the other option. 

There is low chance of new entrant in the transportation sector, because this oligopolistic nexus won’t let this happen and will hinder infinitely. 

These are some of the pain-points which led to abandoning Chakwal by every third person that i know of. And despite of having strong bond to the city, we all have to embrace migration and in some cases immigrate for better opportunities. 

I my self cannot hold my self and often visit my ancestral hometown due to nostalgic past and childhood memories, but had to to flee shortly due to these unending problems. There is not so much left, except the forgone past.