PESHAWAR: The Fata Disaster Management Authority (FDMA) has sought 25,000 tents from the federal government for the returning internally displaced vulnerable families of Fata, who require immediate shelter at their native areas.

Officials told Dawn that vulnerable families included those, whose houses had been fully damaged and who lacked resources to rebuild their abodes.

They said the vulnerable families after homecoming would confront severe cold weather and they would need immediate shelters to protect them from harsh weather.

Says families to face severe cold weather on homecoming

Temperature goes below minus in mountainous area in winter.

The officials said the FDMA required 11,000 tents immediately and that tents provided to IDPs can’t resist harsh wind and snowfall.

An official said the FDMA recently placed the demand to the Ministry of State and Frontier Regions (Safron) for the release of funds to purchase 25,000 tents.

The demand was placed after United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expressed its inability to provide tents to the returning IDPs.

“The UNHCR has major contribution in return of IDPs. Currently, the agency is running out of money and therefore, it has expressed helplessness to assist returning families,” the official said.

The UN agency recently donated 2,500 tents for IDPs returning to South Waziristan and Orakzai agencies against the government’s demand of 40,000 tents. Now, the FDMA has formally asked the ministry to arrange funds for tents.

The repatriating IDPs are receiving Rs35,000 cash assistance from the government, six months food rations and set of non-food items.

The resource-starved and understaffed FDMA had dispatched over 14,000 displaced families to Kurram Agency in June and provided tents to 1,600 families only.

The demand for more tents comes at a time when the deadline for repatriation of 121,964 Fata displaced families is around the corner. The government had announced all IDPs would be sent to their homes by the end of December.

Major caseload of IDPs is from South Waziristan and North Waziristan Agencies, which are 47,791 and 50,444 families respectively. Around 13,570 families will be repatriated to Orakzai Agency, 4,597 to Kurram Agency and 5,186 to Khyber Agency.

On the other hand, the execution of the Citizen Losses Compensation Programme (CLCP) is very slow in the conflict-hit areas of five tribal agencies.

Only 5,376 families in South Waziristan and 379 in North Waziristan have received compensation for their damaged houses.

The government had set up the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Unit (RRU) to carry out the survey of damaged houses in the conflict-hit areas and pay compensation to families from the federal government-funded CLCP.

Under the plan, every family will get Rs400,000 for fully damaged and Rs150,000 for partially damaged house. The programme was launched in March this year.

The ‘daily situation report’ compiled by the RRU suggested that Rs1.95 billion had been paid to affected families under the CLCP, whereas the Civil Secretariat Fata had received Rs5 billion from the finance division for the programme.

The DSR suggested that officials had asked for release of Rs1.5 billion for payment to owners of 4,712 houses in South Waziristan and Rs58 million for 175 verified cases in Orakzai Agency last month.

The RRU has constituted four survey teams for South Waziristan, one for North Waziristan, one for Khyber, four for Kurram and three for Orakzai.

The survey teams comprising officials of the local administrations, RRU, Pakistan Army, Frontier Corps and local elders have verified 7,507 fully damaged and 2,784 partially damaged houses in South Waziristan.

Similarly, 72 fully damaged and 325 partially damaged houses in North Waziristan and 175 houses including 125 fully damaged houses have been verified in Orakzai Agency.

The payment of compensation has not begun in Khyber and Kurram agencies due to delay in the survey.

An official told Dawn that 40 per cent survey of houses in South Waziristan’s Mehsud tribe dominated area had so far been completed.

He said the scale of damages was very high because mud-made houses had been collapsed due to bad weather.

The people were evacuated from South Waziristan in 2009.

The conflict and severe weather have caused widespread destruction to houses and other properties in Khyber, central Kurram and Orakzai agencies, too.

An official in the RRU said confirmation of house owners and their verification was a complicated process so it took time.

He said the review teams took extreme care in the verification process due to unavailability of proper land record and internal disputes among tribesmen.

Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2016