Page 278 - PERSIAN 8 1931_1940_Neat

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Bandar Abbas in the beginning of March, but certain parts of the engine having
been damaged on the road, the Russian Engineer, who had been sent by the
A. E. G. in Tehran (with whom the contract had been made) to supervise the
erection of the plant, was unable to proceed with his work, and the A. E. (>.
were asked to send an electrician to see to the damaged parts. The electrician
arrived in the-middle of May and the damage, which proved to be of a trivial
nature, was rectified, the work of erection completed and the machine started
functioning in the latter part of June. (Only the engine is of German inaiiu-
fact arc, all the other machinery having been supplied by G. Josephy’s Erbeii,
Bilsko, Silesia, Poland). On account of the slump in the carpet industry’
however, the plant has proved to be of little advantage to the Company.
7. Communications and Security.—(a) Communications.—In the beginning
of February, Azarnoush, who had been in charge of the Roads Department in
the Kerman Area for over a year, was succeeded by Nusratullah Mirza Daulnt-
dad, who remained in charge of the department until the latter part of August,
when he proceeded to Tehran, and Abul Fatih Khan Muzaffari, the Chief
Accountant of the Kerman office, held acting charge for the rest of the year.
A new allotment of Rials 500,000 (about £6,000) was sanctioned by the
Central Government at the end of March for resumption of work on the Kcrman-
Shahdad motor alignment via the Sirch pass.
The Governor-General had shortly before this submitted a proposal to
Tehran, recommending the abandonment of this alignment in favour of one
from Kerman to Meshed via Rawar, with which Shahdad could be connected
by a branch route. This proposal having been rejected by Tehran, the Korman-
Shahdad road, work on which had been stopped since October 1932, was once
more taken in hand towards the end of May. The chief reason f.or deciding to
go on with this road was said to be the large sums of money already spent
thereon—i.c., about Rials. 1,300,000 (about £15,000), including the amount
subscribed by the land-owners. However, the work was again stopped at the
end of July, as the result of fresh orders from Tehran.
In the month of June land-owners and merchants from Rawar formed a
company, in conjunction with certain motor transport owners, for the making
of a motor road from Kerman to Meshed by the old caravan route via Rawar.
The levelling of this alignment was therefore taken in hand and completed ns
far as Firdaus (Tun) at.the end of October, when the road was reported io be
passable by light touring cars. With the exception, however, of a few journeys
by light cars, this road has not been used for motor traffic, except as far as
Rawar. The Kerman-Rawar section, it will be remembered, was already
passable by light touring cars.
As the result of the Governor-General’s report to Tehran, at the latter pari,
of the year, recommending the taking in hand of the above road by the Central
Government, with a view to proper metalling of the same, His Excellency has
been instructed to inspect the Kcrman-Firdaus section personally and send a
more detailed report.
A sum of Rials 700,000 (about £8,300) was sanctioned by Tehran, at the
cud of March, for the improvement of the Tang-i-Zagh section of the Kerman-
Bandar Abbas motor road, and the work of widening the pass has been going on
ever since. It should be remembered that the Tang, which is little more than
a mile in length, is the chief difficult section on this road, and often gets blocked
for many days together through land slides resulting from heavy rains, and
that a fair number of vehicles have met with accidents there, sometimes attended
with loss of life.
(b) Security of Trade Routes.—With the exception of a few isolated
cases of petty robberies, security was maintained on all the trade routes through­
out the province. Owing to the disturbances in Baluchistan, however, the
Kerraan-Zahidan road remained unsafe during the last two months of the year.
One Awaz Quli, an outlaw from the Afsar tribe, who had been responsible
for a number of petty robberies committed on the Kerman-Bandar Abbas road
during the last two or three years, having been granted amnesty, gave himself
up to the military authorities in July and handed in a few rifles.
(c) Posh.—No post offices were opened in the province during the
year.