PESHAWAR, June 17: NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah has said that it has become necessary to evoke the law of collective responsibility in certain Federally Administered Tribal Areas to check the growing incidents of kidnapping for ransom as well as to improve the law and order situation there.

He said this while presiding over a meeting held at the Governor’s Fata Secretariat on Tuesday.

The meeting was held to review the situation regarding the maintenance of law and order and other related issues.

Blaming ineffective implementation of the law, the governor said that lack of proper action plan was causing many complexities, necessitating the law of collective responsibility in certain Fata areas.

The meeting was also attended by NWFP’s new chief secretary Ejaz Ahmed Qureshi and IGP Riffat Pasha, heads of law enforcement agencies, political agents and DCOs of Frontier Regions (FRs) as well as Secretary to Governor Sahibzada Saeed Ahmad and Fata secretary (security) Brig Mehmood Shah.

Participants of the meeting were briefed by political agents and DCOs about law and order situation in their respective areas.

Stressing the need for strengthening the border security mechanism to curb the rising incidence of illegal movement and smuggling.

Emphasizing upon the need to take strict action in certain tribal areas, he said that there had been reports of the people there sheltering criminal elements.

The governor also directed the political administrations to form an efficient information gathering mechanism at the agency level besides improving coordination with other law enforcement agencies.

Referring to the eradication of poppy cultivation, the participants were informed that throughout Fata, specially in the Mohmand, Orakzai, North and South Waziristan agencies, the poppy cultivation had been eradicated within the specified timeframe.

Lauding the efforts of officials at the agency level, the governor said that their efforts had been successful while the officials at the FR level needed to improve their efficiency, adding that there was a need for more concrete efforts in the Bannu and Lakki Marwat FRs.