Federal, provincial disaster management authorities should be mobilised for an extensive plan for assisting IDPs
ISLAMABAD: Since Operation Zarb-e-Azb has been launched in North Waziristan, some 0.4 million IDPs have been registered at different registration points that the Pakistan Army has set up. The government and the army have unanimously supported the operation, but the state should ensure that the welfare of the IDPs is given due attention as well.
Camps for people pouring out of the tribal areas have already have been set up and the federal government is supporting the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government in the task; however, it appears that most of the work is still being done by the army. The federal and provincial disaster management authorities should be mobilised to come up with an extensive plan for assisting the IDPs as Ramazan is just around the corner. The provincial health authorities should set up medical camps for clinical inspection of the IDPs so as to prevent any potential outbreak of disease in the camps. The situation calls for a discrete monitoring of the facilitation and relief activities by the prime minister’s office as this is a matter of life and death for thousands of people, who just got displaced from their towns and homes. The stance of other provincial governments on supporting the IDPs has not been very encouraging. More needs to be done on that front.
Sarah Mughal
Published in The Express Tribune, June 26th, 2014.
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