PESHAWAR, Dec 18: The federal government and UN agencies would undertake a rehabilitation programme to help people make livelihood recovery in parts of Federally Administered Tribal Areas that had been won back from militants, officials said.

The United Nations Development Programme would lead implementation of the plan, Provincial Disaster Management Authority Director General Shakeel Qadir Khan told Dawn .

The government, he said, had already approved the programme and now UNDP would share it shortly with its donors, soliciting financial assistance for implementing it.

“We are going to start work soon in parts of Fata where a large number of people have returned after government declared them safe and cleared of militants,” Mr Khan said.

He said that some of the UN humanitarian agencies, including UNHCR and Unicef, had already started rehabilitation activities as per their mandate, providing assistance to the affected communities.

The government has declared the whole of Mohmand Agency safe. Its adjoining Bajaur Agency, too, has seen government's improved writ over the past few months. A large number of the families, who had left the two agencies during the last two-three years because of security concerns, have returned.

Mr Khan said that 100 per cent of Mohmand Agency's displaced families had returned while up to 50,000 families had come back to Bajaur Agency as situation had improved a lot.

“We now have (at Jalozai's camp for internally displaced persons) some 800 displaced families from Bajaur,” he said. Those families, too, were likely to return in a couple of months in view of the fast improving situation in Bajaur Agency, he added.

The PDMA, said its chief, would coordinate with the UN agencies for implementing the early livelihood recovery programme in Mohmand and Bajaur agencies.

“Since PDMA carried out the 'Damage and Need Assessment' to determine losses and rehabilitation needs in Mohmand and Bajaur agencies, therefore, it would coordinate with UNDP for implementing the recovery plan in the two agencies,” he said. The Fata Disaster Management Authority, he added, would coordinate with the UN agency for implementing the programme in the other agencies where peace had been restored.

The emergency humanitarian framework, according to PDMA officials, would cover several sectors, including agriculture, livestock, forestry, fisheries, health, irrigation, water and sanitation, and others in the militancy-hit areas.

Small community infrastructure schemes, said the PDMA chief, would also be carried out in the affected areas as part of the rehabilitation strategy.

To a query as to what alternatives the government has got to rehabilitate the affected communities of Fata in case UNDP fails to arrange the required funds, the PDMA chief said that government did not have an alternative strategy as yet. “We don't have funds to take on the job,” he added.

He, however, said it had been UN's mandate to help communities in need of early recovery. “The government takes time, it has its own procedures to follow,” said Mr Khan.