PESHAWAR: Awami National Party has opposed the operation against non-custom paid (NCP) and reassembled vehicles in Malakand division and asked the government to find a suitable way to compensate owners of the vehicles by providing them with an alternative source of income.

According to a statement issued here on Thursday, ANP provincial general secretary Sardar Hussain Babak told a delegation of elders from Malakand division at Bacha Khan Markaz, Peshawar, that the people of different districts of the region had already suffered due to floods and the menace of terrorism.

The operation against the non-custom paid (NCP) vehicles in the garb of reassembled vehicles is an injustice, he said and added that the government was duty-bound to provide alternative source of income to the people who had sold their properties and bought the cabs.

He said the lockdown had also affected the people.

Mr Babak said that majority of the people in Malakand division were jobless and some of them had bought the vehicles with the money their relatives had earned abroad. He regretted that now the government wanted to deprive them of their lone source of income.

The ANP leader asked the government to immediately stop the operation against the NCP vehicles.

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2020