June 27, 2007	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 11, 1428

MANSEHRA, June 26: Members of the tribal jirga in Allai have decided to lift certain restrictions on the female staff of NGOs and allowed them now to continue their work in the field of education and health in the area on the condition that they would don the veil.

“NGOs will restrict the activities of their female staff inside the women educational and health centres and no female worker will enter houses to talk directly to women,” they said.

Allai is a quake-affected tehsil of district Battagram.

The jirga had banned the female staff from the tehsil last week and announced that if any female NGO worker was found in the area then they would be punished and also warned that the restrictions would be implemented by force.

The jirga had alleged that the female staff were compelling local people to change their faith from Islam to Christianity and were spreading vulgarity in the area.

An important meeting was convened on Tuesday in which members of all the NGOs in the area, district administration, police, law-enforcement agencies and the Allai jirga’s Action Committee participated.

Government and the NGO officials pleaded with the action committee members to lift the ban as it would hamper efforts to provide services to the quake affected people of the area. They said the female staff of the NGOs could provide better services in the area as male workers could not move about in villages freely due to the strict parda culture.

Members of the Action Committee announced that the female staff of NGOs would only be allowed to carry out work in the field of health and education. But they said they would not be allowed to have direct contact with the local women, adding that no women organisations would be constituted in the villages.

Major Kaman of the Pakistan Army, SHO Banna Allahi Mohammad Amjad, tehsil nazim Gohir Ali Khan representatives of the national and international NGOs, including Save the Children, Sungi, Speed, SLS, IRC, Care International, Hayat Foundation, SRSP, Red Cross and others took part in the meeting.