'KP Govt Takes Specific Steps To Help Civilian Terror Victims'

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th May, 2017 ) : The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government has taken a number of specific steps, including compensation, to mitigate hardships suffered by civilian victims of terrorism and their families in an effort.

According to PDMA KP Director Relief Abdul Basit, the Civilian Victim Support Fund (CVSF), which was established at the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), was one such measure. It was an investment fund, for which donors and the government pooled contributions and its proceeds envisioned to would be used to provide short and long-term aid to the civilian victims.

Abdul Basit was addressing a policy dialogue on "Compensating Civilian Victims of Terrorism and Conflict in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa", jointly organized here by the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) and United States Agency of International Development (USAID).

He said a 28-day timeline was set to complete the process of compensation to the civilian victims, apart from delegating the authority to award compensation at divisional level and creation of a dedicated budget line for civilian victims in 2011.

Earlier, Ahmad Ali, Senior Research Fellow at I-SAPS, said the civilians in KP had been the hardest hit by the incidents of terrorism during the last decade. Sharing the statistics compiled by the National Crisis Management Cell of the Ministry of Interior, he said KP had faced total 3,441 terrorist attacks between 2006 and 2015, 26 per cent of terrorist incidents across the country.

Ahmed Ali said in those terrorist attacks, a total of 4,924 persons lost their lives, 71 per cent of them were civilians. Similarly, he added, total 12,527 people sustained injuries in the terrorist attacks, with even higher number of civilian victims (75 per cent).

Adnan Sher of the KP Governance Project said it was clear from official statistics that civilian casualties in terrorist incidents was high , especially in KP and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

He said the KP government had adopted an efficient and effective framework for compensating and rehabilitating the victims. The fund [CVSF] was a great step in that regard which would contribute towards mitigating the hardships being faced by the civilian victims and their families in the province.

Muhammad Khalid, Director General at FATA Disaster Management Authority, also spoke at the event which was attended by representatives of the KP government, international development partners working in Pakistan, civil society organizations working on conflict-related issues, academia as well as journalists.