PESHAWAR, Oct 29: The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) has cleared more than 900 families from Khyber Agency for shelter at Jalozai camp, Nowshera after finding them genuinely displaced from the restive area owing to the ongoing military crackdown on militants.

Officials at the camp say arrangements are being made to take in the cleared families besides providing them with food, foreseeing arrival of thousands of more people from Khyber agency, including women and children, who had to flee their houses for life.

“Some 300 families have already been issued tents, while more are being pitched to accommodate more than 600 more families, who have been formally declared displaced after verification of particulars,” Faiz Muhammad, chief coordinator (IDPs), PDMA told Dawn on Saturday.

PDMA has been busy with the IDPs’ verification exercise since the last week after more than 3,500 families from Khyber agency formally sought the status of being displaced. The subsequent heavy workload forced the authority into stopping registration of more families for Jalozai camp on last Tuesday to focus on verification of the particulars of those whose data was collected. The move distressed families desperately awaiting entry to the camp for shelter and food.

Mr Faiz said particulars of 2,253 families belonging to Malik Din Khel and Sipah tribes would be subjected to particular verification, leaving the remaining applicants unattended since they belonged to other tribes of the agency.

He said there was no change in the Khyber agency administration’s policy of not granting the IDP status to tribesmen belonging to Sturikhel, Shaluber, Qamberkhel and Aka Khel tribes for being unaffected by the ongoing military operation against militants.The PDMA official said the administration of Jalozai camp assisted by the UN humanitarian assistance agencies was making arrangements to allot tents and issue food handouts to all newly-registered displaced families from Khyber agency. He said all 900 new displaced families could not be provided with tents at once because the camp administration was still busy pitching new tents for them.

“The camp administration is not short of tents or food supplies. People need to understand that it takes time to arrange shelter and food for thousands of new IDPs,” Mr Faiz said, adding that the authority couldn’t plan its activities well as ‘everything (military operation) happened quite suddenly.’

According to him, the number of Khyber agency tribesmen declared IDPs comes to around 6,000 as a tribal family normally has five to seven members. The PDMA official said UNHCR had deputed four teams to the camp for setting up the tents, adding that it took around an hour to pitch a tent.

“The pitching of tents for newcomers is likely to take time before their allotment,” he said when asked about slow pace of issuance of shelter to new IDPs.