Mainstreaming tribal areas

A meeting of the K-P cabinet held in Landi Kotal subdivision of Khyber tribal district for the first time

True to its commitment, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf — which leads governments at the Centre and in the provinces of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa — has initiated practical steps for bringing about reforms in the erstwhile tribal areas which have now been merged with K-P. For the first time, a meeting of the K-P cabinet was held in Landi Kotal subdivision of Khyber tribal district. The historic meeting approved Rs24 billion worth of annual development fund for tribal districts and decided to take steps for an immediate utilisation of these funds. The steps proposed by the cabinet shows that the provincial government, to start with, is concentrating on expediting the process of development in tribal districts with focus on the provision of basic facilities to residents.

The proposed steps include: expediting the rehabilitation of the internally-displaced families and rebuilding of the entire damaged infrastructure; identifying suitable sites from where to ensure provision of basic municipal facilities in all 26 tehsils of erstwhile Fata; overcoming shortage of doctors in various hospitals and of teachers in educational institutions, besides prioritising the rebuilding of all the damaged schools and health facilities; arranging skills development training for at least 2,000 talented tribal youth; identifying sites for constructing stadiums to promote sporting and recreational activities among the tribal youth; solarising 300 mosques as part of the plan to solarise all the mosques in the seven tribal districts; and launching, at a later stage, a safari bus service and rail service from Peshawar to Torkham to promote tourism, and with that the local economy and employment.

The process of reforms in the tribal region has four dimensions — political mainstreaming, legal mainstreaming, economic mainstreaming and security mainstreaming. These are interdependent and need to be planned and fit together very carefully as each has its own administrative and financial implications, as also observed by the National Implementation Committee on Fata Reforms. While rulers are determined to meet their election pledge of bringing the tribal areas on a par with other parts of the country, they need to adopt this holistic view of the reforms process for their efforts to succeed.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 2^nd, 2019.

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