The people affected by the military operation in Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency have demanded the government halt the ongoing operation in the area and disburse cash for food and ration, which they said had stopped for the last nine months. They warned that if their demands were not accepted within 15 days they would block roads from the Governor’s House to the Political Agent’s House and the responsibility would lay on the government. Addressing a news conference on Thursday, Iqbal Afridi of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) Khyber Agency and affectees of the Jalozai Camp said due to the ongoing operation in Bara, thousands of families had been compelled to leave their houses and forced to live in rented houses in Peshawar, while a majority had been compelled to reside in Iqbal Afridi with no basic facilities.
They said that they were passing facing various difficulties in the camp, but the government had kept silent over the issues. “Our educational institutions, hospitals, business areas have been destroyed and our children are also deprived of basic education,” they lamented, adding that the government had given Rs 9,700 per family to the affected people under the scheme of cash for food, which they said had also ceased for the last nine months. They added that more than Rs 2.5 billion or its alternative of food items, which had be given to the affected people, had been halted by the government and feared that the amount had been embezzled.
