K-P govt to include four top bureaucrats in Fata merger committee

Officials running the tribal areas affairs will help smooth transition of system

PESHAWAR: Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government has decided to include four bureaucrats in the standing committee for Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) merger and transfer of its administrative control to the provincial government.

The standing committee is head by Senior Minister Atif Khan. The committee will hold its first meeting after the inclusion of the bureaucrats including additional chief secretary Fata, secretary finance and law and information secretaries.

After the inclusion of these bureaucrats, the committee will issue a new notification to declare the reconstituted body and hold its meeting. According to Information Minister Shaukat Ali Yousufzai, the decision regarding inclusion of administrative secretaries for information, finance and law had been previously taken by the provincial cabinet but their names were inadvertently omitted in the notification.

The government has now decided to include additional chief secretary in the committee as he is well aware of the Fata secretariat and affairs pertaining to merged areas.

The additional chief secretary has also been running the system of Fata making his inclusion necessary, Yousufzai said.

He said that the committee will soon call its meeting to prepare its report on the merger issues which it has to submit to provincial cabinet within 15 days.

He reminded that the committee was formed on recommendation from the bureaucracy which suggested the government to maintain Fata secretariat and additional chief secretary with only a change in their names so as to smoothly transfer the system from federally administered tribal areas to provincially governed districts.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6^th, 2018.