ISLAMABAD: The offices of international non government organization (INGO) Save The Children (StC) were reopened on Wednesday after it was granted permission by the Ministry of Interior to continue working for another six months on an interim basis.

The organisation has welcomed the government’s decision to reopen these offices, which had been closed since June 11, when the government summarily ordered them to wind up their operations.

StC had been under intense scrutiny from the country’s intelligence agencies after the Abbottabad operation in 2011 that led to the killing of former Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden. After the raid, it emerged that the organisation provided cover to US spies hunting Bin Laden.

A district administration official, requesting anonymity, said that the office was reopened after instructions to this effect were received from the Ministry of Interior.

However, an interior minister official, requesting not to be identified, said that there were lots of pending issues, due to which it took time to reopen StC offices.

“Through the first notification, StC was instructed to ask all foreign staff to leave the country within 15 days. However, StC informed us that there was no foreigner working in the organisation so that order could not be implemented,” he said.

“Then, it was directed that the organisation cannot work in Fata and KP. STC said that it was not working in Fata and had already announced that it will stop its activities in KP from June 30, 2015,” he said.

“Another issue was that the prime minister had formed a committee, headed by Tariq Fatemi, to look into the affairs of INGOs and give proposals about their registration. On June 22, the interior minister revealed the committee’s recommendations and said that now, INGOs cannot work in KP, Gilgit-Baltistan and other areas where there were security issues,” he said.

“Moreover, the committee recommended that INGOs’ registration would be done through modern computerised means within three months,” he said.

“Diplomatic missions were also pressuring the government to resolve these issues because since 2013, only 19 INGOs have been registered. Diplomatic missions were of the view that the status of the INGOs should be clear because they don’t want to give money or donations to unregistered organisations,” he said.

Meanwhile, an StC spokesperson said: “We would continue to work as a transparent and accountable partner of the government of Pakistan. StC does not have any expatriate staff in Pakistan. It has 1,200 employees; they are all Pakistanis.”

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play