PESHAWAR, Aug 1: The Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR), NWFP, has asked some 100,000 inmates of Kacha Garhi refugee camp to vacate the site to pave the way for initiating construction work on the last phase of Ring Road and development work on the Regi Lalma Housing project.

The Kacha Garhi camp’s elders held a meeting with the senior officials of the commissionerate in Peshawar on Tuesday during which they were asked to leave the site within nine months. Sources said that the camp representatives called for extending the deadline for one year, but their request was not accepted.

The sprawling Kacha Garhi camp, situated on main Jamrud Road Peshawar, was set up in early 1980s when a large number of Afghan refugees rushed to Pakistan after the invasion of former Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

Different heads of states and dignitaries had visited the camp during the Afghan war to share sympathies with the refugees. The camp has a huge infrastructure where different donor and relief agencies are running health-care centres, vocational training centres and schools.

An official said the camp’s inmates would have to go back to their country under the UNHCR-sponsored voluntary repatriation programme or shift to the new camps, established along Afghan border in Kurram, Khyber and Bajaur Agencies.

He said the refugees had been directed to vacate in three months the area through which the road passes, while those living elsewhere in the camp had been given a nine-month deadline.

Earlier, the Afghan refugees vacated Nasir Bagh camp on the outskirts of Peshawar where construction work of the multi-billion-rupee Regi Lalma Housing project will be initiated. The government awarded the project contract to the National Logistic Cell which has started ground levelling work for the housing scheme.