RAWALPINDI: The district administration on Friday identified more than 148 hotels to accommodate people arriving from Afghanistan and prepared the list of hostels of universities and colleges if space issue arises.

Commissioner Syed Gulzar Hussain Shah told Dawn that the government had asked the administrations of Rawalpindi and Islamabad to make arrangements for accommodating more than 15,000 people to be evacuated from Afghanistan in next two or three weeks.

He said the local administration had made arrangements to accommodate the people in the hotels in first step and in case of space constraint, the people arriving from Afghanistan will be accommodated in the marriage halls and then “we can use hostels of universities and colleges”.

He said it was expected that the people from Afghanistan would be accommodated in Islamabad first and then shifted to Rawalpindi. He said the arrangements had been finalised in Rawalpindi.

The commissioner said for the security purposes, the local police and law enforcement agencies had been asked to make foolproof security arrangements.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2021