PESHAWAR, Dec 9: Eight women convicted of drug trafficking have been jailed for life and fined up to Rs1 million in the NWFP, official sources said here on Wednesday.

"The use of women and children in drug-related crimes is on the rise because they can be exploited easily," said Miss Faiza of the Aurat Foundation which is running a project in Peshawar's central jail.

Ms Faiza said Jamila, 45, who belonged to a good family of Pindi, began drug trafficking after she got divorced and had no job to earn her living. Though the job was risky, she chose it to make quick money.

She worked as a drug pusher and also supervised other women in her group and smuggled narcotics even to foreign countries in capsules, said Ms Faiza. Most of the women in NWFP's prisons had been convicted for drug trafficking, said Azam Khan, the inspector general of prisons, NWFP.

According to official figures of the prisons, some 196 women were under trial and 129 were convicted, most of them in cases of drug trafficking. Women drug pushers are given life imprisonment with fine as maximum punishment under the Control of Narcotics Substance Act 1997, but not a single woman has been sentence to death for drug trafficking so far.

The eight women in the central prison of Peshawar, jailed for life, were also fined ranging from Rs5,000 to Rs1 million. If these women complete their term, but remain unable to pay the fine, they will have to undergo further imprisonment. Kausar Awan, a clinical psychologist of the Dost Foundation, said most of these convicts were victim of poverty and unemployment.