Addressing a news conference, FATA parliamentarians including MNAs Shahjee Gul Afridi, Sajid Hussain Turi and Ghalib Wazir and Senator Sajjad Hussain Turi along with tribal elders deplored the government's inability to table the FATA reforms package in the last session of National Assembly despite the federal cabinet approved the reforms on March 02, 2017.
"We have been forced to use the last option, we are going to give a call for march on Islamabad on May 20, 2017 by inviting all the political parties and the tribesmen from all the tribal agencies and frontier regions and will stage sit-in till fulfillment of our demands," announced Shahjee Gul Afrdi, Parliamentary Leader of the FATA lawmakers in National Assembly.
Prior to the mass protest, he said, an all-parties conference (APC) would be convened on May 06 in which all the mainstream political parties have already been invited and many of them have also assured their support for the forthcoming protest. "We want all the mainstream political parties to support the just cause of the tribal people as we doubt the government's intention due to delay in reforms. The government has neither given an assurance nor those at the helm of affairs are ready to hold meeting with us," he said, adding bringing the tribal areas into the mainstream and merging them in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was a unanimous decision which must be implemented in letter and spirit.
He said that it was not just reforms package but realisation of the "unified" Pakistan, adding the lack of seriousness on the part of the government is deplorable. He said that the people of the FATA will not compromise on their due rights. He said that China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is being considered as game changes for the whole region but it could not be realised without bringing the FATA in the mainstream, being the route of the corridors.
To a question, he criticised Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman for creating hurdles in implementation of the FATA reforms package and FATA's merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. "He [Maulana] has opened his shop in FATA and he does not want the people to be mainstreamed with a fear that he would lose his vote bank," he argued.
On March 2, 2017, the federal cabinet approved in principle recommendations of a parliamentary committee headed by Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, recommending phase-wise merger of the tribal areas into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and repealing the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR).
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017