KOHAT, July 14: The business community has demanded strict action against the Afghan refugees who have been refusing to vacate local refugee camps.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) had established a huge camp in the tribal Kurram Agency near the Afghan border from where most of the refugees were to be shifted in October 2001.

In Kohat, the government had bulldozed a portion of the Ghamkol camp to force the residents to leave the area, but most of them shifted to the houses of their relatives.

Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR) had declared Sadda in the Kurram Agency as the new headquarters of its administration where a big piece of land was acquired for the refugees. The interior ministry had made a decision to shift all the refugees living near the Afghan border in the wake of terrorist threat from the western border.  

The administration had provided every facility to the refugees, but they were reluctant to leave the place they had been occupying for the last two decades.

The chairman of Kohat Chamber of Commerce and Industry Manzoor Ahmed while talking to Dawn  said that the refugees had disrupted the economic balance in the region by purchasing shopping centres and agricultural land.

He said that the business community feared that if they were not forced to leave, they would have full control over the local market in a short span of time.

He said that the Afghans had invested huge amount of drug money in various types of businesses, as a result of which the local community could not compete with them.

Subsequent to the recent harvest season the refugees had brought along with them millions of rupees from Afghanistan after selling opium and made investments in property business and smuggling of tea, he said.

 The situation was preventing the importers from importing tea, he added.

The authorities concerned were not paying heed to the problem due to a large number of refugees present in the area.

He said that the refugees had an upper hand because they had also been smuggling precious stones like ruby from Afghanistan.

President Mushtarika Markets Association Haji Gulzar said that the refugees posed a great threat to the peace in the area.

 He said that some of the refugees were running criminal gangs and were involved in highway robberies and extortion of money in connivance with law enforcement agencies.

He said that the district council had adopted a number of unanimous resolutions, calling for the early repatriation of the refugees, but no action was taken.