ISLAMABAD: Minister for States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) Abdul Qadir Baloch Friday said preparations for Federally Administrative Tribal Areas (FATA) merger into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) were going on fast track basis but the announcement of the merger could take a year or two.
“Merger is not possible without complete preparation. However, the government is trying hard to complete the preparation and announce the merger during its tenure because it has worked hard on the process and it wants to take credit of the historical decision,” the minister said while addressing a press conference.
Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Sartaj Aziz was also present on the occasion.
He said presently there were not any administrative, financial or political hurdles in way of the merger and the government was fully implementing all the recommendations made by the FATA Reforms Committee in January 2017.
Abdul Qadir Baloch said the government was committed to abolishing the black law of Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) on priority, which denied tribal people the right to appeal before any court for change in conviction, the right to legal representation and the right to present reasoned evidence.
Sartaj Aziz said the government was presenting a bill in this regard in the National Assembly on December 11 which was likely to be approved by the NA and then it would be finally approved by the Senate in the next week. He said in order to mainstream FATA economically, a committee was formed which had almost completed its work and it would present its report before the National Economic Council by end of current month.
He said three percent of federal divisible pool would be set aside for FATA for next week, which amounted to around Rs 100 billion per year. He said this allocation would be spent on various development projects in health, education, water, energy and other projects for socio economic development of the people of the area.
Sartaj Aziz said that the government had also planned to expand Levy Force, which according to the plan would be given the status of police on later stage.
He said the process of recruiting additional 20,000 personnel in Levy Force would be finalised within two to three months and the recruitment process was being held under Frontier Corps.
Abdul Qadir Baloch said that the Rahdari system in FATA was also being abolished from January 1, 2018. He said under this system heavy taxes were imposed on any commodity being transported from other parts of the country to FATA.
He said a Council of Advisory had been formed comprising members of FATA in National Assembly and Senate and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor would be bound to implement the decision of the committee.
Furthermore, he added that the additional chief secretary of FATA had been assigned the role of FATA chief operating officer to control the issues of the area.
He said in health and education sectors of FATA, there were 2293 vacant posts out of which 1440 posts had been sanctioned while the remaining would be sanctioned within 15 days.
Published in Daily Times, December 9th 2017.
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