Foreign assistance: 150 families from FATA handed ownership of houses

Saudi fund and UN Refugee Agency help 150 families left homeless because of security forces’ operations in FATA.

The Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) and the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, handed over ownership certificates of houses to around 150 families left homeless because of security forces’ operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

According to press release issued on Monday, UNHCR chief in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Jacques Franquin, presented ownership certificates to the new inhabitants in Bakhmal Shah Village, Mohmand Agency on April 3.



“With the financial support and technical guidance of SFD, UNHCR is committed to building 625 permanent, two-room houses worth $8.2 million for 3,700 most vulnerable returnees whose houses had been fully or partially destroyed in the conflict-affected agencies of Fata,” added the statement. Thus far, UNHCR has completed the construction of 248 houses in Mohmand, Bajaur and South Waziristan agencies, it read.

The house-building project’s aim is to reach those who have not received prior government shelter assistance packages; persons with specific needs, households run by women, as well as women at risk with little or no income. “Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced in different waves of security operations carried out across Fata since 2008,” said the dispatch.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 8^th, 2014.