The National Assembly was informed Wednesday that an estimated 5,000 people have migrated from Balochistan to other parts of the country due to security threats.
Parliamentary Secretary for Interior and Narcotics Maryam Aurengzeb informed the House that these people include Punjabis, Urdu speaking and Hazaras.
However, she contested the figure of 300,000 mentioned by movers of the notice and said neither this figure was true nor there was any mechanism earlier to establish whether the figure was authentic or not.
MNAs Nafisa Shah, Shahida Rehmani, Azra Fazl Pechuho, Imran Zafar Leghari and Aijaz Jakhrani had drawn the attention of the minister for interior and narcotics towards migration of 300,000 people from Balochistan.
The parliamentary secretary said since there was no integrated mechanism to count such numbers, the information gathered from local government departments in Balochistan reveals that this figure was between 5000 and 10,000.
“We cannot ascertain any such figure until it is brought to fore by the provincial government,” she added.