PESHAWAR, Feb 17: Unregistered Afghan refugees residing in the Kacha Garhi camp had been directed to leave the place by March 15, otherwise they would face legal action, a senior official said.

He said those Afghan refugees who had got themselves registered under the Proof of Registration (PoR) programme had been asked to get ready for either repatriation to Afghanistan or relocation to Dir and Chitral districts of the NWFP.

The programme was approved by representatives of the UNHCR and the Afghan and Pakistani governments at a recent meeting of the tripartite commission held in Islamabad.

The Pakistani government has announced that the Kacha Garhi camp, the oldest refugee settlement, would be closed down by June 15 this year, to be followed by Jalozai camp in Nowshera by end of August.

NWFP Commissioner for Afghan Refugees Nasir Azam said the government had given amnesty to unregistered refugee families residing in the Kacha Garhi camp till March 15 and they would be given financial assistance under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) voluntary repatriation programme.

“The government will not take legal action against unregistered inhabitants of the Kacha Garhi camp till March 15,” Mr Azam told Dawn here on Saturday.

After the deadline, he said, the Afghans having no Proof Registration (PoR) cards would not be eligible for the monetary assistance to be given by the UNHCR under the voluntary repatriation programme.

Unregistered Afghans living in other parts of the country had been given the April 15 deadline for leaving the country and after that they would not be provided financial assistance by the UNHCR, the official said.

The UNHCR will start voluntary repatriation programme from March 1 and the agency will provide travelling cost and cash payment to each refugee family to re-establish itself in Afghanistan.

Officials said that those families who did not register themselves with the government and failed to obtain PoR cards would be deported under the relevant laws of Pakistan.

The National Database registration Authority (NADRA) has registered nearly two million Afghan refugees in the country and issued them PoR cards to validate their stay in Pakistan for the next three years.

In the NWFP, officials said, some 1.3 million Afghans had been issued the PoR cards during a three-month-long exercise.

An official dealing with the security of the camps said that Commissionerate for the Afghan Refugees (CAR) had asked the provincial government to deploy police in the surrounding areas of the Kacha Garhi camp to stop Afghan families from moving to other areas of the province.

The camp elders had given an undertaking to the provincial government to vacate the Kacha Garhi camp by the end of May, the official said. But now they were seeking extension, he added.