Consultation begins on 10-year plan for tribal districts

BARA: Stakeholders suggested several measures to improve the lives of the tribal population as the consultation process on the provincial government’s 10-year development plan for merged districts got underway here on Tuesday.

The members of the consultation team for the tribal districts, including provincial Minister for Food Qalandar Lodhi, Member National Assembly (MNA) Iqbal Afridi, Khyber Deputy Commissioner Mahmood Aslam Wazir, Local Government Department officials, industrialists, traders and elders discussed the plan at a forum in Bara, Khyber tribal district.

Speaking on the occasion, the participants said the government should start the development plan from scratch because all infrastructure had been damaged in the decade-long militancy. They said the focus should be on education, health, drinking water and roads.

“The government should rebuild 68 destroyed schools in the Bara subdivision as soon as possible," Malik Zahir Shah Afridi said, adding the tribal people have been facing the poor healthcare and roads problems after returning to native areas.

He said that people had also been facing a host of other problems, including electricity, drinking water supply and irrigation.

Malik Zahir Shah said almost 90 percent tribal people were on the job before the displacement. He said that now they were jobless. The businesses have been ruined, he pointed out. “The government should put a focus on jobs’ generation and build industrial zones in all the tribal districts,” he suggested and said the unemployment rate was increasing day by day.

Khyber Union general secretary Murad Saqi said the tribal people had not accepted the Fata merger into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He said that people had not been taken into confidence over the merger, which took place in haste.

“The previous government had made multiple promises with the tribal people before the merger of Fata but none of them was fulfilled,” he claimed, adding even now the tribesmen were needed education, health, drinking water and roads.

Murad Saqi said the government should exempt the tribal districts from taxes for 30 years declare tax-free zones as well. “There are no medical and engineering colleges and university in Fata,” he said, adding that the students of the tribal districts were problems in pursuing higher education in other areas.

“We want the government to give interest-free loans to the tribal people,” said Abdul Ghani Afridi, a senior leader of ruling Party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.