PESHAWAR, March 30: The government has decided to set up an emergency relief camp at the site of an abandoned housing scheme in Tank district where Afghan refugees from the troubled South Waziristan region would be resettled, officials said.
About 200 refugee families, who escaped fighting in Azam Warsak, have already taken refuge at the abandoned Dabara scheme site, a senior official at the Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees said.
Officials said the commissionerate and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees had provided 200 tents and quilts to the displaced families at the Dabara camp. Efforts were being made to provide other facilities, including water, health and education, at the camp, they said.
The officials said the recent clashes between the security forces and foreign militants holed up in South Waziristan forced the Afghan families to leave their old refugee tent villages (RTVs) in the Azam Warsak area to a safer place.
Elders of the Afghan refugees had also requested Federal Minister for State and Frontier Regions Aftab Ahmad Sherpao for their shifting to an alternative site. The sources said the government would shortly rehabilitate the remaining 42,000 refugees from the South Waziristan region to Tank district.
An official source told Dawn on Tuesday that some 5,343 refugee families living in the five refugee tent villages at Azam Warsak, Baghar, Srakanda, Zarinoor and Zarmillana in South Waziristan would be relocated to the Dabara township site.
He said the commissionerate was preparing a plan for the resettlement of Afghan refugees living in the volatile region. They would be given two options - either return to their homeland under the UN voluntary repatriation programme or shift to the new camp.
The federal government is also contemplating a plan to relocate 263,522 registered refugees from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to Dabara in Tank. The government has earmarked 17,000 kanals at Dabara to settle the refugees to be relocated from different parts of the tribal areas.
Officials said the relocation plan would be executed in different phases because the government could not generate funds to relocate the entire refugee population from Fata to the settled areas of the province in one go.
According to the sources, the federal government was negotiating with the UN refugee agency and other donor agencies to secure funds for the relocation plan. They said there were certain problems and complications, including the budgetary allocation which hindered plan's execution.
The officials said the Afghan commissionerate was assessing the federal government's proposal to erect a fence around the Dabara camp to restrict refugees' movement.
They, however, said fence would create problems for the authorities in supplying foods and other daily items to the refugees as the UN agency had stopped the provision of ration to them. The world agency stopped providing food to the refugees in early 1995, who now depend on the local resources.
