Equal treatment: IDPs protest lack of basic facilities

KOHAT: Scores of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from North Waziristan Agency protested in front of Kohat Press Club on Sunday, demanding basic facilities from the government. Addressing a gathering of more than a hundred displaced people, Dil Shad Khan, a tribal elder, said the government is focusing on helping the displaced people living in Bannu, but has ignored around 25,000 IDPs from the agency who are living in Kohat and Hangu without any facilities. The demonstrators also chanted slogans against the federal and provincial governments for neglecting them. Khan said the displaced people living in Jarma Camp of Kohat are bracing the cold weather without blankets and warm clothes. He said if the government cannot provide them ration and basic facilities, then it should repatriate them to their areas. The IDPs demanded points of NADRA be set up in different parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa for the displaced population just as they have been established in Bannu.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2014.