LANDI KOTAL: The Khyber Agency political administration on Thursday issued notices to all illegal Afghan nationals to vacate their houses situated near the Torkham border within three days.

Officials said that the notices were served on illegal Afghan nationals owing to the prevailing security situation at the border. They said that those Afghans, who failed to abide by the orders, would be forcibly deported to Afghanistan.

Sources at Torkham told Dawn that more than 500 Afghan families were residing in a compound in Bacha Maina locality adjacent to the border. Most of those families belonged to Nangarhar province of Afghanistan and travelled regularly between the two neighbouring countries, they added.

Sources said that a good number of those Afghans, even children below the age of 10, were involved in cross-border illegal trade of auto-parts, edibles and other daily use items in both the countries.

Khyber admin sets three-day deadline for illegal Afghans living in the area

Authorities were, however, clueless as to where those Afghan families would shift after vacating their houses. They said that the families without legal documents would also be deported to Afghanistan and would not be allowed to reenter Pakistan without valid travel documents.

It was for the third time during the last five years that Afghans living in Torkham and Landi Kotal were forced to vacate their houses by the local administration. However, majority of them relocated to their previous abodes only after few months.

Meanwhile, local administration in Landi Kotal has also imposed a ban on use of tinted glasses in all private and public transport vehicles. The Khasadar Force on Thursday removed plastic stickers from a number of vehicles and warned the owners of monetary fine if they violated the ban in future.

LEVIES: The Khyber Agency political administration inducted 187 new recruits into the Levies Force after completion of two-month process of selection.

About 4,000 candidates submitted their applications with the authorities after Khyber Agency political administration advertised the new posts in Levies Force in December last year.

The applicants also included those 157 young aspirants, whose selection as Levies personnel was reversed by the local administration in February last year after accusations by some unsuccessful candidates about irregularities in their selection process.

As many as 90 successful candidates of January 2015 batch of the Levies first moved Peshawar High Court for their reinstatement but the court upheld the decision of political administration decision while citing technical flaws in the selection process.

The group then filed a petition in the Supreme Court, which granted them permission to join Levies and directed the political administration to provide them an opportunity to prove their fitness for selection in the force.

The political administration in the meanwhile handed over the process of conducting health and physical fitness tests to Pakistan Testing Service (PTS), an independent recruitment entity, to ensure transparency in the selection process of new recruits.

The PTS recommended 991 candidates for interviews after through health and physical screening of all the candidates held in February, officials at Khyber House told Dawn. They added that they invited 337 candidates for final interviews after short-listing of the PTS recommended candidates.

Sources said that after the induction of new recruits, the total number of Levies personnel reached 1,387 in Khyber Agency. The strength of the force will be gradually increased up to 3,000 in future.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2016