PESHAWAR: Eight months on, a special committee to supervise implementation of the recommendations of Sartaj Aziz committee report and guide in finalisation of the long-term socio-economic plan for Fata has yet to hold its maiden meeting.

Officials at the helm of affairs and members of the committee have expressed ignorance about the high-level forum, whose formation was notified on Dec 20, 2016.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Iqbal Zafar Jhagra is the chairman of the nine-member body.

“It does not come to my mind that the committee has ever held its meeting,” said a committee member in Peshawar.

Special committee headed by KP governor was set up in Dec last year

Another member told Dawn that he was verbally informed that he had been included in the committee but he had yet to receive any notification from the competent forum. The committee comprises Safron secretary, additional chief secretary of Fata, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa additional chief secretary (planning), secretary of planning and development Fata (notified as the secretary of the committee), representatives of 11th Corps, finance and planning divisions and former KP chief secretary Riaz Noor as co-opted member.

Eleven technocrats, former bureaucrats, educationists and health professionals and sectoral experts were also notified as additional members to support the committee.

Fata ACS Dr Fida Wazir and P&D secretary Mohammad Zubair, who is the secretary of the committee, were not available for comments.

The notification had outlined 10 points term of references for the sectoral experts and technical members. The experts will examine the agreement of the 10 years development plan with national development strategy plans like Vision 2025 or the sustainable development strategy. They will identify gaps in the plan and review the implementation capacity and how to empower the Fata Secretariat to seek assistance from the private sector both for project execution and service delivery.

Following the submission of the Sartaj Aziz committee’s report on reforms in Fata to the federal cabinet last year, the government had constituted the committee to oversee the process of reforms in the region and finalise a long-term socio-economic plan to bring the region on a par with the settled areas of the country.

The Civil Secretariat Fata in collaboration with foreign donors had designed the Sustainable Development Plan 2006-15 but missed the targets in various sectors due to multiple reasons.

The implementation cost of SDP, prepared by experts of foreign donors including USAID, DFID and senior officers of the government, was about Rs124 billion. Officials in the Fata Secretariat had confirmed that Rs 99 billion had been spent on development activities in different sectors.

Currently, the federal government has engaged donor agencies for the preparation of strategies and plans to implement reforms package in the tribal region.

The future of the committee’s report, which recommended the merger of Fata with KP, hangs in balance due to differences of opinion among major stakeholders. Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, coalition partners of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in the centre, have opposed the merger plan calling for the ‘mainstreaming’ of Fata, including rehabilitation of the damaged infrastructure.

Other parties and a group of parliamentarians from the area are demanding Fata-KP merger and representation to the tribal people in the KP Assembly in the 2018 general elections. The security establishment, which initially backed the merger, is now supporting the ‘mainstreaming plan.’

Sources said the draft of Rewaj Act was under consideration of the National Assembly’s relevant standing committee in Islamabad, while the local government plan for the region was also part of the process. They said after review, the committee would table the proposed law in the assembly.

A senior official in the Ministry of Safron said the entire Fata reform plan was moving around financial resources.

“Any plan whether about merger or mainstreaming will not move forward without finances,” he said.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2017