Daily Times

Seven days of anti-polio drive kicked off sans security on Monday as the Khasadar and Levies forces refused to provide protection to the polio workers.

The forces personnel were protesting and remarked that until their demands were met, they would not provide any security to the polio drive.

Khasadar line officer in Landi Kotal, Swalzer Khan Afridi, said that the Khasadar and Levies had rendered countless sacrifices to safeguard their country during the war against terrorism. Ironically, all of their services had been forgotten as they had been unjustly left to the mercy of God in the wake of the merger of Federally Administered Tribal Area (Fata) with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, he claimed.

“We will neither provide security to the polio workers nor administer polio vaccine to our children,” Afridi remarked.

A polio supervisor working in Landi Kotal, not willing to be named, confirmed that his team was conducting an anti-polio drive in the area without any security measures.

He further added that although it was quite risky, they were performing the vaccination campaign on the direction of their authorities as they had no other option. No official responsible for the polio campaign could be reached despite attempts to contact them on their respective phone numbers.

Meanwhile, the protest by Khasadar force at Bab-e-Khyber, Jamrud, for the acceptance of their 22 demands entered its 16th day on Monday.

Khyber Deputy Commissioner, Mehmood Aslam, also paid a visit to the protest camp and asked the security personnel to put an end to their agitation. However, they declined, telling him that the protest would continue until the government accepted their demands.

In another similar development, the health department decided to administer anti-polio vaccination to every single person crossing into Pakistan via Torkham border as an attempt to isolate the spread of the virus from Afghanistan. An opening ceremony of the scheme was also organised on Monday at Pak-Afghan border at Torkham, which was attended by health officials, administration and forces officials.