Participants at a meeting here on Monday discussed the impacts of the conflict on remittances in Swat.
Arranged by the Regional Institute of Policy Research and Training (RIPORT), the meeting was attended by experts from the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) and Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (GIIDS) in Geneva, Switzerland.
The institute’s Malgaro Kor Project Coordinator Abdur Rehman told the participants that the Swat conflict not only destroyed local businesses and employment but also affected those families receiving remittances by bread winners working outside the valley and overseas.
He said that the militancy negatively impacted households that are dependent on remittances.
Rehman said that about 35 per cent of all households are dependent on income from remittances and of this, around 25 per cent received foreign remittances, while about 10 per cent are dependent on income generated from domestic remittances. He said that the dependency ratio was 1:10 in Swat, and a large number of people were dependent on the income of a single individual.
The project coordinator said that during the militancy, the Taliban extorted money from people and non-payment resulted in their beheading. “The families found themselves in a tight corner in the face of Taliban demands, as the international financial crisis had brought down wages earned aboard,”
he said.
He said as people were not able to pay the Taliban their demands and resultantly, they had to borrow money to pay militants, while at the same time, many people lost their jobs aboard as companies downsized.
PIDE Director Dr Usman Mustafa, GIIDS Senior Researcher Professor Jean Luise Lesie and the RIPORT chairman also spoke.
Khalid Aziz said that RIPORT and PIDE are collaborating in strengthening the newly instituted Economics of Conflict, Security and Development Centre at PIDE, Quaid-i-Azam University.
He said that the aim is to understand the dynamics of conflict in this region and enable the formulation of alternative policies.
He said that RIPORT recently concluded a survey identifying the causes of conflict in Swat from a survey of 384 households and that policy recommendations derived from this survey have been forwarded to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 19th, 2011.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ