Provincial status for FATA demanded

PESHAWAR: The FATA Reforms Movement (FRM) has demanded provincial status for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) after approval of a self-governance reforms package for the Northern Areas.
“Like Gilgit-Baltistan, the federal government should make such an arrangement under which FATA could have its own governor, chief minister and 75-member independent assembly,” FFM President Asad Afridi told a press conference at Peshawar Press Club. He demanded that the government give a province’s status to FATA and appoint SAFRON minister as its governor. He claimed that independent province’s status for FATA would not only bring the tribal areas into the country’s mainstream politics but also FATA people would get their identity.
Flanked by FRM Secretary General Mohammad Tahir Shah Safi and Spokesman Zar Ali Musazai, Asad Afridi said that the federal government should also focus on FATA women’s representation in the country’s politics and allocate seats for them in Senate. Besides, he also demanded of the government to increase the number of National Assembly seats for each FATA agency from one to two. The FRM also demanded allocation of a seat for each Frontier Region (FR) in the National Assembly. Terming the federal government’s reforms package for FATA as insufficient, he said the president’s announced reforms package was unclear.
He said that though the president announced extension of Political Parties Act to FATA, but problems of FATA people were neglected in the recently announced package. Criticising the black law Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), he said the law empowered only one man (political agent) who at the same time was a ruler as well as a judge.
He said executive should be separated from judiciary in tribal areas; otherwise, people would have no other option but to go to Taliban courts for justice rather than to file their cases in political agents and assistant political agents’ courts. He said that if the government wanted to end the influence of Taliban, it must concentrate on winning hearts and minds of the people by redressing their grievances, providing them cheap and speedy justice and creating employment opportunities for them.