Daily Times

PARACHINAR: Loads of tribesmen in Kurram Agency’s headquarters Friday hailed the passage of landmark FATA-KP merger bill aimed at paving the way for progress in the tribal belt after years of lawlessness, war and the subsequent destruction.

During a news conference at Parachinar Press Club, Senator Sajjad Turi said the merger was actual freedom for the people of FATA.

Other leaders present at the celebratory news conference believed that the strategies designed to further plunge tribespeople into deprivation had failed after the passage of the constitutional bill by the National Assembly.

“Tribesmen have attained freedom in Ramazan, just like Pakistan won independence in the same holy month,” they said, adding: Time is ripe for implementation of FATA reforms after the passage of the bill.

On Thursday, the National Assembly passed the bill titled Thirty-First Amendment Act, 2018, which paved the way for merger of tribal areas with KP, bringing it into the ambit of law.

The merger promises reforms in the tribal areas, which have been put on the back burner for quite a long time.

Earlier in January 2018, the National Assembly made history by abolishing the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR), an oppressive colonial-era law imposed in the tribal areas, in order to pass legislation for extending the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the Peshawar High Court (PHC) to FATA, which was also a long-standing demand of the people of the frontier tribal region.

According to reports, the tribal belt in Pakistan is the least developed area of the country with most of the people living below the poverty line and having no access to basic facilities.

Published in Daily Times, May 26^th 2018.