KARACHI: Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that Sindh has been hosting Afghan refugees, registered and unregistered, for the last 37 years, who are mostly settled in Karachi and its adjoining areas.

Stressing the need to expedite their repatriation, he said Sindh had been spending a lot of its resources on taking their proper care but in return Sindh had been facing a worst law and order problem for the last many years which now had improved only after launching of a targeted operation.

Mr Shah stated this while talking to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Indrika Ratwattee, who called on him with his delegation here on Thursday at CM House. The delegation members include deputy chief of the UNHCR Yua, chief commissioner for Afghan refugees in Islamabad Imran Zaib, deputy representative of UNHCR Johann Siffointe, head of UNHC field office Karachi Younis Sahibzada, commissioner of Afghan refugees Ghazanfar Ali Agha and field associate UNHCR field office Karachi Syed Bilal Agha. The chief minister was assisted by Sindh IGP A.D. Khowja, principal secretary Naveed Kamran Baloch and home secretary Shakeel Mangnijo.

The chief minister said the apex committee, the highest forum to implement the National Action Plan (NAP) in the province, had decided to repatriate all illegal immigrants, including Afghans. The federal government was approached to expedite their repatriation but the federal government on a request of the UNHCR had delayed repatriation for six months.

He urged the UNHCR to take necessary measures and make arrangements to repatriate them so that the provincial government could move forward in implementing the decisions taken in the apex committee meetings.

Indrika Ratwatee said there were around 600,000 Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, of them around 1.3 million were in Sindh but the chief minister did not agree with his figures saying that the repatriation process was in progress and every day around 2,000 Afghan nationals returned to their homeland. He added that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was the only province from where 350,000 Afghan nationals had returned to Afghanistan so far and Punjab was the second largest province to have repatriated a good number of refugees but from Sindh only 32,000 Afghanis had returned so far.

Giving details of the repatriation of a large number of refugees from KP, the UNHCR chief said that they usually remained in touch with their people back in Afghanistan. Moreover, they were close to their country from there. As for Sindh, he said that Karachi had vast employment opportunities and the refugees were far away from their country border.

The chief minister said there was a large number of unregistered Afghan nationals living in Sindh. He urged the UNHCR to get them registered so that the Sindh government must know who was who and where he lived. “We spend on their food subsidy, they are using our utilities and even their children are receiving education in our government schools,” he said and added that being host community Sindh had taken proper care of Afghan nationals but in return “our people have suffered a lot in the shape of terrorism”.

The UNHCR chief said that they had allocated $175 million for education and health of the refugees, and of the sanctioned amount $30 million had been earmarked for Sindh. “You can spend this amount on the education, health and other social services of the Afghan refugees living in your province,” he told the chief minister.

The chief minister directed his home secretary to coordinate with the UNHCR for the registration of all the Afghanis living in the province and with their support and coordination make arrangements to repatriate them.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2016