Federal Minister for States and Frontier Region (SAFRON) Lt Gen. (Retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch yesterday expressed his helplessness to facilitate early repatriation of internally displaced persons.He said his ministry was toothless as all the administrative powers were vested in the Governor House Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Speaking at a ceremony regarding award of scholarships to Mehsud IDPs of South Waziristan, the minister regretted that he may fail to meet the expectations of FATA’s people as his ministry was too powerless to ensure uplift activities in tribal parts of the country.“The Ministry of SAFRON has its historical importance. Founder of the nation Muhammad Ali Jinnah held this ministry with himself. But today, the Governor House has all the administrative powers. My ministry is helpless,” the minister, who according to reports is at loggerheads with the Governor KP, told the gathering. “And I am ashamed to say that we (government) failed to rehabilitate Mehsud IDPs even after the lapse of 10 years. The sacrifices rendered by Mehsud tribe are matchless,” the minister maintained.
The ceremony was attended by Senator Saleh Shah and MNA Jamaluddin and retired bureaucrats and students hailing from the volatile South Waziristan. Sadly, the days when repatriation of IDPs was a regular subject in newspapers and TV channels is also fading, but the problem hasn’t faded away. Despite the military’s repeated assurances that operation Zarb-e-Azb is almost over or in its ‘twilight phase’, the fighting in the tribal belt keeps going on. There is no fixed timetable to the end of the conflict and the IDPs are kept in limbo. There is no independent survey of how the repatriation effort is going in the areas the government cleared to proceed in, but if the disjointed cries of dissatisfaction from the IDPs – and now the minister’s criticism – is anything to go by it is not progressing well. Abdul Qadir Baloch had it right when he said that the war against extremism is not going to be won by military action alone; the socio-economic uplift of the tribal belt to a standard of living comparable to other provinces is the final piece in the puzzle. The government and the military claim that they are well aware of the fact, yet military matters continue to supersede the rehabilitation effort. Recently the government bought eight F-16 jets from the U.S, at a cost that could have sustained the rehabilitation effort for year.With winter coming, the refugees are set to face a hard time, it is hoped that the government is cognizant of their plight.
pk.shafaqna.com
