PESHAWAR: Senator Dost Mohammad Khan on Friday said the abolition of the separate quota after the merger of the former tribal areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has caused resentment among the local population.
Asking Prime Minister Imran Khan to take notice of the situation that he said was causing anger among more than eight million tribespeople, particularly the youth. “Before the merger, Fata was a separate administrative unit under the federal government. It had four percent quota in federal government jobs, admission in professional medical and engineering colleges and resources from the federal divisible pool,” he explained.
The separate quota for Fata was allocated by former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto with the view to ensure the socioeconomic integration into the national mainstream in order to prevent secessionist tendencies especially among the youth.
The senator said with the abrupt merger, the separate quota became the prime causality, causing resentment and despondency among the tribal youth when the doors of employment and admission in professional colleges where shut on them.
The tribesmen especially the youth who had been ravaged by the decades of militancy and military operations interpreted the merger move as a ploy to turn them into second-class citizens through such machinations.
In order to arrest the unpatented waves of despondency and frustration among the teeming unemployed tribal youth arising out of the unilateral abolition of the erstwhile Fata quota, Dost Mohammad Khan said that a way out of the issue, if implemented with the sincerity, will surely be panacea for their problems.
He said Sindh province, urban rural quota distribution pattern evolved by the then government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto way back in 1974, may be adopted in the case of KP and the erstwhile Fata also.
Senator Mohammad Khan said a constitutional amendment should be moved in the federal services and admissions in professional colleges, while 30 percent of separate quota for them in the provisional jobs and admissions in colleges in KP.
“I am confident that if this Sindh formula is implemented in the context of KP and erstwhile Fata it will go a long way to ensure the true integration of merger plan. Pakistan is our homeland and we have to make concerted efforts to foil the evil designs of the hostile elements who tend to foment dissent by calculatedly sowing the seeds of the separatism among the tribal youth by decrying on the issues of denial of jobs quota,” member of the upper house maintained.
Senator Dost Mohammad Khan said he would propose that separate secretariat to be headed by the Additional Chief Secretary on the pattern of southern region Southern of Punjab be established as early as possible.