PESHAWAR, June 25: A levies training centre will start functioning in Bajaur Agency in September to provide training to law-enforcement personnel in the Federally Administered Tribal Area.

Col (retd) Syed Rasool Khan, project director of law- enforcement agencies in Fata, said the training facility was being set up with foreign financial assistance.

“Levy and Khasaddar personnel from across the tribal areas will get formal training at the centre, which is likely to start functioning in September,” he said.

He said there was no facility in tribal areas to train levy and Khasadar personnel in an organised way.

The federal government had launched the Rs1.2 billion training project for law-enforcement agencies in the tribal areas in 2004.

Under the three-year training programme, the NWFP governor’s Fata secretariat would train 4,008 levy and 16,000 Khasadar personnel in the tribal region.

The purpose of the project is to maintain law and order, combat terrorism and drug trafficking, control traffic, etc.

Construction of infrastructure, including barracks and pickets is in progress in all the seven agencies and six Frontier Regions of Fata, and levy and Khasadar forces are being equipped with weapons, communication tools and vehicles. Sources said 78 barracks and 74 posts had been set up in the area.

An official said the governor’s Fata secretariat needed funds to continue the project but despite requests to provide Rs350 million, the Ministry of State of Frontier Region had yet to release the amount.

“We have held several meetings with federal authorities, but the secretariat has yet to receive the funds,” he said.