Chitral:? Like other Pakistanis, Chitralis badly need education in cleanliness. Except some homes where ladies are naturally cleanliness loving and keep their environment spic and span, generally Chitralis do not have cleanliness of the environment and even probably personal hygiene on their priority list. Who is to be blamed for this? is again a question that is very easy to answer. The parents, the teachers, the elders and most of all the religious preachers stand guilty of not preaching cleanliness which is the basic teaching of Islam and Islam puts cleanliness so high that it says “cleanliness constitutes half of your faith”.

Post Kaghlasht festival garbage left uncleaned (photo credit ‘pride of chitral’)

The schools should preach and practice cleanliness and give it high priority in the education syllabus. Religious preachers should lay special stress on cleanliness from the Islamic point of view and the government through TV channels etc should emphasize the importance of cleanliness in the scheme of things. A private NGO namely ‘CHEPS’ keeps conducting cleanliness operations at different places which is commendable. However more important thing for people is to learn cleaning their environment themselves, instead of looking up to some organisation or the government, to do the job. .. CN report, 25 Apr 2019