Separate province for tribesmen sought

Shahzada Wazir

WANA: A score of tribal elders demanded a separate province for the tribal area instead of merging Fata with Khyber Pukhtunkhwa. Tribal elders said that they have sufficient resources to run a separate province independently.

They said in case of merging Fata in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, tribal people would lose their century old traditions and they would not be able to have their own chief minister to work for the development of tribal areas as the heavy majority of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa will be able to exploit the resources of Fata, the allocated budget for Fata in shape of a separate province, will be used in Fata not in the areas of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa.

An elder said on the condition of not to be named that a foreign agenda was behind in merging of Fata with Khyber Pukhtunkhwa. A tribal elder told this scribe that Fata is rich with untapped precious resources.

If these resources were utilized with well thought out strategy for sustainable development, then Fata may become the most prosperous part of the country in future.

He said that the untapped resources in Fata are more than the resources in the entire central Asia for which global powers have been fighting in Afghanistan for more than three decades. It is important to be noted here that if Fata was merged with Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, the Chief Minister would always be from the present majority populated Khyber Pukhtunkhwa and he would freely keep on giving Fata resources elsewhere in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa.