The many misfortunes that have befallen the people of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata, but a term recently rendered obsolete) have been added to and again it is no fault of their own. There are a series of bureaucratic and structural changes that accompany the shift of Fata to the administration of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government, which has been slow to pick up the threads of its new responsibility. Indeed, such is the confusion about the status of the lands that used to be Fata that there is uncertainty about who or what governs them.
The government in the form of the PM met with tribal leaders on Tuesday October 2 and assured them that all would be well, that funding for annual development programmes would be released and unpaid salaries would — eventually — be paid. Be that as it may there is unrest among unpaid staff who blocked roads in Peshawar on Tuesday. Considering they have not been paid for four months, this is entirely justified. It is not that the money is not there because it is, but payment has not been authorised by the chief minister. Once again there is a capacity issue as there so often is. Provincial governments lack the competencies to administer budgets effectively, a problem not only in K-P but across the country. As ever it is the common man that suffers soonest and most frequently. Those that hold the purse strings never go hungry.
Prior to the merger the ADP monies had been allocated reasonably effectively through a system that had survived for years. A comprehensive planning and synchronisation failure has now led to the old system being suspended to the obvious detriment of the people of ex-Fata. This was entirely foreseeable and need never have happened. It matters in the bigger picture as well, as Fata linkage to the quality or otherwise of national security is a long-established reality. Civil unease for whatever reason can easily turn into civil unrest, and some emergency housekeeping is now an urgent priority.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 4th, 2018.
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