Govt decides to devise comprehensive policy on Afghan refugees

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Cabinet has decided to devise a comprehensive policy on Afghan refugees before next extension of their stay in Pakistan in June next year.

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry, briefing newsmen along with Minister for Energy Umar Ayub here, said that Prime Minister Imran Khan will be given a comprehensive briefing on the issue.

Out of 2.5 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, two million refugees were registered and 0.5 million were so far unregistered, he said. As many as 879,198 Afghan refugees had citizen cards of Afghanistan but reside in Pakistan and 13,94,000 had refugee cards.

Fawad said that the issues related to Financial Action Task Force (FATF) were being looked into and Mansoor Hussain Siddiqui had been appointed Director General Financial Monitoring Unit.

Read: Govt starts collecting data of refugees, illegal immigrants

He said the cabinet gave approval for appointment of Justice (retd) Abdul Rauf as Chairman Wage Board Award which would finalize the award within 120 days to fulfill longstanding demand of the journalist community.

He said the cabinet was informed that next week a big operation would be launched against 100 big defaulters of Federal Board of Revenue. He said that an Islamabad-like anti-encroachment drive would also be launched in Karachi to clear the state land. Karachi Port Trust and Pakistan Railways land was prime target of the encroachers, he informed.

The minister said that lands comprising thousands of kanals had been retrieved in Islamabad. The Minister said the cabinet also decided to further strengthen the Right to Information Act in order to bring transparency in governance and ensure citizens’ right to know. He said that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) RTI law was strong and there was need to strengthen the federal law as well.

The cabinet also decided that tax exemptions for Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) would be retained till year 2023.

Fawad said the prime minister directed all ministers to promote meritocracy and not give recommendations, or receive recommendations from others.