ISLAMABAD: The Standing Committee of the Senate on States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) has said that it would recommend to the government that compensation amount, being paid to the families of the Levies force’s martyred soldiers, should be increased as the current compensation amount of Rs 200, 000 was not enough for them.
The committee meeting held on Friday also said that it would make recommendations for an increase in the compensation amount and recruitment of local people in the levies that would later be submitted to President Asif Ali Zardari.
The committee expressed it satisfaction over the disbursement of funds among the 44,000 people of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) under the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP).
The committee had called the Mohmand Agency’s Political Agent to brief the senate body on the issue of displacement of people but he could not attend the meeting and requested the committee to defer the issue till the next meeting. Committee Chairman Senator Hafiz Rashid told the committee to postpone the issue on the request of the political agent who had promised to appear in the next meeting to brief the members.
Senator Rashid told Pakistan Today that the issue of displacement of people was a serious one as the government did not have any plan to help them. He also said the committee was giving final touches to its recommendation that poppy cultivation should be allowed in FATA on a limited scale for medicinal purposes as the international community had allowed India and Turkey in this regard.
