Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Members of opposition parties staged a walkout from the National Assembly (NA) on Thursday in a bid to press the government to introduce the FATA Reforms Bill.

The recommendations to bring the tribal areas at a par with the rest of the country were approved by the federal cabinet on March 2, but the matter was then delayed.

As the NA session started after being adjourned for three days in a row due to a lack of quorum, NA Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi allowed members of the opposition to speak first.

Addressing the house, Opposition Leader Khursheed Shah said the government wanted to sideline the FATA reforms and the area’s merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He stated that the people of tribal areas wanted their rights.

Pakistan People’s Party’s Naveed Qamar said the government was being blackmailed to not present the bill in Parliament.

Later, an ally of the ruling party and chief of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami League Mahmood Khan Achakzai said everyone wanted to solve the issue.

He said the government had non-serious approach to FATA reforms. He said that the foreign and interior ministries, along with everyone else, have not understood the issue.

Achakzai, whose party along with another government ally Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl, has been opposing FATA’s merger with KP, said the Frontier Crimes Regulation in the tribal areas should be abolished first. He also called for the formation of a committee with all stakeholders to debate the matter and demanded a separate governor for FATA.

Later, as Qaumi Watan Party chief and former interior minister Aftab Sherpao was speaking, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf MNA Ali Muhammad said those who wanted to “talk about Kabul should go there”.

Then, the opposition members walked out saying until the bill was presented they would not attend the NA sessions.

Minister for States and Frontier Regions Lt Gen (r) Abdul Qadir Baloch on Thursday said that only Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz had introduced reforms in the FATA as other parties did not bother to do so during the last 70 years. Responding to a point of order in the National Assembly, he said that the issue about FATA Reforms Bill would be solved amicably by taking on board all political parties. “A meeting with be held with the prime minister tomorrow to discuss the FATA reforms bill and I am confident that the issue would be solved amicably,” he added.

Published in Daily Times, December 15^th 2017.