PESHAWAR, July 2: The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has laid off some 87 employees at its Peshawar office in one week, according to sources.

Sources told Dawn that the refugee agency laid off some of its recently-recruited contractual staff owing to the sudden decrease in its activities as a result of slowing down of the Afghan refugees’ voluntary repatriation programme.

An official said that in the beginning on average 1,500 refugee families were returning to Afghanistan daily only at Takhta Baig voluntary repatriation centre, Khyber Agency.

But in recent weeks their number has reduced. At present on average 500 displaced families are going back to Afghanistan via Torkham checkpoint, he maintained.

The official said that most of the staff, at Takhta Baig and other repatriation centres in the NWFP and the adjacent tribal areas, had become redundant which is why the contract employees were being relieved.

Initially, the UN agency had appointed above 300 employees on contract to look after the returnees. “The remaining staff will be spared with the passage of time,” the official said.

The UNHCR said that during the last four months over one million refugees had returned to their country from Pakistan under the voluntary repatriation programme.

The UN refugee agency officials said that the future of the repatriation programme was hanging in the balance due to shortage of funds.

The officials said that the shortage of funds was hampering the repatriation process. Also, the agency might stop paying grant to the returnees if the donor countries did not cooperate.