85,000 displaced people in Kurram have ‘no’ roof over their heads

Militancy leading to mass migration as IDPs face problems securing accommodation.

HANGU:

The number of people displaced from Kurram Agency due to the ongoing military operation has risen to 85,000, according to Sahibzada Anis, the district coordination officer for Peshawar.

To add salt to their woes, many families are finding it hard to find shelter.

“It is not easy, local people have put up the prices, if I use up too much of my savings on accommodation I will have nothing to live on. Who knows how long this displacement will last,” Asim Ali, 35, said as he looked for a room for his family of six in Hangu.

The displaced families complain they are being ignored by authorities. “No one is really helping us. We don’t know where to go,” Hakimullah Gul, 50, said.

“We need tents, food, non-food items, health and washing facilities for the [internally displaced persons],” an official of the Disaster Management Authority for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas said. In the meantime, problems are mounting as more people flee.

“The district authorities in Hangu have been directed to house IDPs at the Togh Serai camp there,” said Adnan Khan, spokesperson for K-P’s Disaster Management Authority.

The officials at New Durrani camp in Lower Kurram have also been asked to accommodate IDPs. “This is a former camp for Afghan refugees; now it is being used for the IDPs,” said Duniya Aslam Khan, spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

UNHCR deploying extra staff

According to the UNHCR, 700 families (4,900 individuals) have sought refuge at the New Durrani camp, while 8,000 additional families (56,000 individuals) had been registered by local authorities.

“There is an urgent need to improve infrastructure with proper layout of tents, construction of latrines, washrooms and kitchens, and to conduct a verifiable electronic registration process,” said Mengesha Kebede, UNHCR’s Pakistan representative. “That’s why we are urgently deploying expert staff to help authorities manage the situation.”

Murad Khan, a medical student who has been working as a volunteer at the local NGOs to help IDPs said that the IDPs do not like to live in camps. They see this as a loss to dignity and privacy, especially for women and therefore prefer to either rent or move in with relatives.” That makes it harder in many ways to deliver assistance to them,” he said.

According to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Pakistan currently has 500,000 IDPs, but displacement from Kurram is adding to that number.





Published in The Express Tribune, July 20^th, 2011.