LANDI KOTAL: Delay in registration of the newly displaced tribal people from Bara and Tirah areas of Khyber Agency has forced the dislocated families to get tents on rent at Jalozai camp, Nowshera.

During a visit to the camp, this scribe was told that the displaced tribal people, already living at Jalozai, were renting out their extra tents to the newly dislocated people from Akkakhel and Sipah localities of Bara and Tirah.

“The rent of an old and worn out tent ranges from Rs500 to Rs3,000 per month,” said 17-year-old Ahmad, who fled Kulla locality of Tirah valley after his house was torched by militants last month.

Ahmad, however, lives in a rented room near the camp along with his widow mother, two younger brothers and three sisters as his mother was not willing to live in a rented and worn out tent at the camp.

Najeeb Khan, another displaced tribesman, also said that some new families were given tents on rent in phase III of the camp where he had lived for almost three years before shifting back to Akkakhel area in Bara a year ago. He himself is now running from pillar to post to lay a hand on a tent for his displaced family as he had abandoned his older tent before going back to Akkakhel.

Sources said that a number of registered and unregistered displaced families had to buy a tent for Rs5,000 to Rs9,000 from the open market, depending on the condition of the tent.

Rent of a worn out tent ranges from Rs500 to Rs3,000 per month

Officials of Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) also admitted that the displaced tribal people were renting out their tents to the newly arrived families.

An official told Dawn on condition of anonymity that although there was no declared ban on renting out a tent at the camp. He said that they were reluctant to take any action against those, who were involved in the ‘business’ of renting out tents, as it was aimed at providing immediate shelter to the needy families.

“We fear that donor agencies may also refuse to provide more tents to the camp dwellers if they come to know about renting out of extra tents at Jalozai camp,” he said. He added that a number of families, registered in 2009 and 2010, had long shifted to houses outside camp but they kept the allotted tents and space with them. Now such people are renting out their tents to earn some extra bucks and retain their space at the camp.

Haji Imran, a member of the camp council, told Dawn that renting out a tent at Jalozai was not a new phenomenon and a number of families had been doing it since long. “Off-camp registered families in the past would also rent out their tents to their relatives and friends for a token money but the practice has become rampant owing to fresh influx of temporarily dislocated people at the camp,” he said.

Mr Imran said that most of the newly displaced families were poor and not able to rent a house in Peshawar or any other city. They prefer to rent a tent at the camp for a lower rate. He, however, insisted that most of the displaced families were sharing their tents with newly arrived families on humanitarian basis.

Meanwhile, PDMA has claimed to have provided 300 more tents to the newly displaced families at Jalozai camp.

However, spokespersons for the newly displaced families including Haji Noor Mohammad, Haji Multan and Adil Miran alleged that the new tents were distributed on political basis and needy families were still without tents.

According to PDMA, of the total 76,109 displaced families so far enlisted with Fata Disaster Management Authority only 2,300 have arrived at Jalozai. It said that 1,520 families among them were unregistered.

FDMA officials said that the number of displaced people reached 503,559 of which 303,865 were children and 102,237 were women. They said that they completed verification of 15,096 families whose formal registration would begin on November 27.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2014