Tarin vows to arrange funds for ex-Fata uplift

Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin assured the Special Committee of the National Assembly on the Development Works in former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) that he would make efforts for collecting funds from other provinces for the newly-merged districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).

Tarin told the committee, which met here with its chairman Junaid Akbar in the chair, that provinces were supposed to provide 3% of their share in the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, but they were reluctant. He added that he would try to address their concerns.

The committee was informed by the security officials that 15,961 families of 37 villages of Khyber district would be rehabilitated in 2022, including 4,519 families in March alone. They said that these families comprised around about 94,000 men and women, adding that their houses were in ruins.

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The chair noted that people were returning to their native areas after 10 years, asking that they had lost their businesses, so what would they do on return. Committee member Gul Dad Khan said that no assembly member from ex-Fata was included in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP).

K-P’s Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), officials informed the committee that shopkeepers from North Waziristan had reservations to the compensation for the loss of their goods. Another committee member Dost Mohammad said that no one got a single penny in his area.

Tarin told the committee that the provinces had to pay 3% for ex-Fata and assured that he would try resolve this issue at the NFC meeting. K-P Finance Minister Timur Jhagra said the NFC had a sub-committee on ex-Fata but added that the province alone could not redress other provinces’ concerns.

Maulana Abdul Shakoor asked why ex-Fata was merged with K-P when there was no money. Ayesha Ghous Pasha raised the issue of how much money Fata had received since 2016 and how it was spent in the area. The committee was informed that Rs220 billion had been given to Fata since 2016.

National Assembly Speaker Assembly Asad Qaiser told the committee that big issues in ex-Fata were unemployment and conversion of war economy into a regular economy. The meeting was also attended by Khurram Dastgir khan Mohsin Dawar, Jamaluddin and Arbab Shehzad.