KOHAT, March 30: A local leader of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal has urged the federal government to announce a Rs5 billion development package for Hangu district, which has been repeatedly hit by sectarian violence since 1980s.

He said that even after the passage of 58 days to the latest episode of the riots, shopping centres remained closed in Hangu which presented the look of a ghost city.

Fida Saadi, the district chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami and district naib amir of the MMA, told a press conference on Thursday that the provincial chief minister and governor had not visited the city to sympathise with the communities who had suffered human and property losses.

He recalled that Hangu had been destroyed four times as a result of man-made calamities but constructed again and again by the people. But this time, he said, the people were very tired and had lost the hope that the normalcy could ever return to the city.

Therefore, he added, government help had become imperative to regenerate hope among the residents.

"The agony and sufferings of the people can be gauged from the fact that the city bazaar remains closed and the people are afraid of coming out of their houses amidst acute food shortage whereas no relief goods have been sent by the provincial or federal governments," he deplored.

Mr Saadi said that the provincial government had always failed to enforce its writ in the settled area of Hangu and treated it as a tribal area, which had further aggravated the situation.

Now again the provincial government had constituted a tribal jirga to resolve the sectarian issue and failed to pluck up courage and punish the miscreants and criminals identified in the 2001and 2006 inquiries conducted by the Peshawar High Court judges, he said.

He said that the people had been forced to migrate to other parts of the country because the government had failed to restore normalcy in the area.

He demanded that instead of police and Frontier Constabulary, security of the district, bordering Orakzai, Kurram and North Waziristan Agency, should be handed over to the army because ‘experience showed that during sectarian violence, officials of the two agencies had showed cowardice and instead of saving the people’s lives and property, ran for their own lives.’

He said that the district, which was declared a sensitive area every year, had only one police station and a police force comprising 44 policemen.

He presented a 10-point formula for returning normalcy to Hangu and demanded that the businessmen should be allowed to keep their own security guards.

Both the rival sects should with mutual consent restrict their religious gatherings to their mosques and Imambargahs, he proposed.

A committee, headed by a sessions judge, should be constituted to identify those preaching sectarian hatred and action should be taken against them, he suggested.

The city businessmen should be exempted from paying taxes and government jobs should be provided to youths from both the communities according to their population ratio, he said.