Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak has called upon the federal government to make an immediate decision for the repatriation or stay of the Afghan refugees.
He was addressing a meeting at SAFRON Secretariat here on Tuesday. Federal Minister for SAFRON Lt-Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Zafar Iqbal Jhagra, JUI-F Chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, JI Ameer Sirajul Haq, QWP Chief Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao, Hasil Bezenjo, Shah Mehmood Quershi of PTI, Farhatullah Babar of PPP and others attended the meeting.
“The unregistered refugees posed a threat to the security of the province”, he added. He asked for a plan for the stay of the refugees and there should be a regulatory regime for their business. ‘Because our own economy is sledging down and the black economy is surfacing’, he added. He said that their stay has overburdened the health and education sectors. He said that his government sent Sharbat Gulla to hospital not to jail and she requested to stay in the province. His government was contemplating to give her the status of refugees but later she changed her mind due to unknown reasons.
The CM said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was host to Afghan refugees for more than three decades. But now the province had different challenges and that should be understood.
He called upon the federal government to start the registration of unregistered refugees and plan out everything and give a policy in this regard. This would help maintain law and order otherwise we would live under constant security threat.
He said that his government would never ask for forced repatriation of Afghan refugees. Under the voluntary repatriation process, six lac refugees including registered and unregistered returned to their country. He asked that this should not be politicized because it creates problems for the country.