PESHAWAR, July 30: The fragile security situation in the province has made it difficult for the authorities to undertake the Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS) in the troubled North and South Waziristan agencies. Such a survey would help the government collect data about socio-economic needs of the people of the tribal areas, officials said.
The Fata Civil Secretariat had recently suspended the survey in North and South Waziristan agencies and the Frontier Region of Tank following the kidnapping of nine employees, including five women, from the Mirali tehsil of the North Waziristan on May 19.
An official told Dawn that the NWFP Bureau of Statistics, the executing agency, had intimated political authorities in the troubled regions to provide staff to complete the survey by the end of August.
The authorities in the respective areas were yet to respond, the official confirmed.
The bureau has completed survey in five agencies and five frontier regions of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). The government has allocated Rs30 million for the project in the annual development programme for Fata for the year 2006-07.
Officials said the government would not take any undue risks by sending outsiders to these areas for conducting the survey after the kidnapping of the employees, because of the growing lawlessness in the areas. That was why the political authorities had been asked to nominate some locals from these areas for the exercise.
They said that government might drop the survey altogether in case the political authorities failed to provide local people for the survey.
