IDPs ‘being forced’ to pay bribe

PESHAWAR: The United Nations has refuted a government claim regarding the return of internally displaced persons to the Bajaur Agency, saying the people are still waiting to get registered in the camps set up by the government, sources said.Elders of camps, set up for internally displaced people, also alleged that they are being forced to pay Rs1,500 as bribe to get registered at the registration point in the Bajaur Agency.The provincial relief commissioner and the UN’s representatives have expressed concern over the allegation and requested the Fata Secretariat to probe it, they said.According to them, this emerged during a meeting of the Provincial Coordination Committee tasked to look after the internally displaced people, held at the Afghan Refugees Commissionerate under Provincial Relief Commissioner Jameel Amjad on Monday.Officials of the Fata Secretariat told the meeting that 2,000 families from the 11 IDPs camps had left for the Bajaur Agency and had been registered by the registration point there.The UN representatives on the occasion refuted the claim, saying the IDPs had not left the camps and displaced families from the troubled areas were still trying to get registered.‘The government is discouraging registration of new IDPs in its bid to force repatriation of IDPs, which is incorrect,’ sources, who were part of the meeting.The UN representatives told the meeting that they had no existence in Bajaur to verify the government claim regarding the return of the IDPs.
They said ground realities showed that the populations of the camps were still increasing and there was no documented proof that suggested that the IDPs had left for Bajaur.The district revenue officer of Swat told the meeting that 11,000 families from the violence-wracked areas, who had taken refuge with relatives in the Mingora city, had returned to the respective areas soon after the peace deal between the government and the Tehrik Nifaz-i-Sharia-i-Muhammadi.Camp elders on the occasion asked the meeting to register them in the camps and give them a package at the time of their return, the sources said. The UN, they added, also supported the elders’ plea that they should be registered so that they could get the relief package.The meeting was also attended by the authorities concerned of the federal and provincial governments, representatives of national and international donor organisations, besides officials of the National Disaster Management Authority.It discussed and reviewed the ongoing relief activities with particular reference to food, shelter, healthcare, education, drinking water and other related facilities being provided in the camps and outside camps to the IDPs in different districts of the province. The participants updated the meeting regarding ongoing initiatives and relief activities being carried out for the wellbeing of the IDPs by donor agencies in the camps and vowed to continue the same. The UN representatives proposed that the names of the displaced families opting for their respective areas should be removed from the lists in the camps, so that confusion was avoided at the time of distribution of relief materials when the repatriation got starts.Earlier, the administrator of IDP camps updated the meeting about the current population, saying 14,111 families had been registered in the camps and another 86,869 families were living with friends and relatives.