PESHAWAR, Dec 19: Foreign non-governmental organizations looking after  the Afghan refugees have failed to comply with the government’s directives to recruit 50 per cent of their staff from the country, sources said.

The ministry of state and frontier regions had issued fresh intimation to the NGOs to recruit Pakistanis on half of the posts occupied by foreigners, including the refugees, relief workers confirmed.

Despite repeated intimations, the sources said, the relief agencies working in refugee camps and in Afghanistan had yet to obey the directives and they still gave preference to Afghans.

An official attached with an Arab relief agency said: “Every NGO has recruited 60 to 65 per cent Afghans despite the fact they are bound to employ Pakistanis.”

The official said his organization had received a letter from the Safron ministry a couple of weeks back.

Additional commissioner of Afghan commissionerate, Farmanullah, said on Thursday that the ministry had directed foreign NGOs funded by Arab and Western countries to submit detail reports about their employees by Dec 31.

The ministry, he said, would take action against those organizations which did not implement the policy.

He said that before getting registered the NGOs had agreed to fulfil the terms and conditions and they were bound to reserve 50 per cent quota for Pakistanis. It was imperative for an NGO to nominate a person as head of the organization from the country which had established it, he said.

At least 176 Islamic, Western and Afghan NGOs are registered and they have been conducting relief activities for refugees in camps here and in Azad Kashmir since the 1980s.

Officials of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, a body of various NGOs, said many Afghans had been associated with the agencies for the decades, therefore it would be difficult for their management to relieve them at this juncture.

They said most foreign NGOs only maintained their liaison offices here after the fall of the Taliban government.