- Ali Khan says govt has re-designated tribal agencies as districts, sub-divisions of KP
ISLAMABAD: State Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan on Tuesday informed the National Assembly that the delimitation process in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) was in the final stages to conduct elections of the Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Responding to a Calling Attention Notice regarding slow process of the merger of the tribal areas into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he said that the task force headed by the provincial governor was working to remove bottlenecks and accelerate the merger process.
Ali Khan said that the tribal agencies have been re-designated as the districts and subdivisions of the province. Similarly, he said that the posts of the political agents and the assistant political agents have also been re-designated as the deputy and assistant commissioners.
He said that both the deputy and the assistant commissioners had been given magisterial power in the former tribal areas. For the resolution of health-related issues of the tribal people, he said that all the (tribal) agencies had been linked with the provincial Health Secretariat.
The state minister said that all the vehicles in the former tribal areas had been given tax exemption for five years. He said that the locally produced products had also been given five years tax exemption. The federal government would provide Rs 1.63 billion for the development of these tribal districts, he said.