Two out of 18 districts of Afghanistan's southeastern Paktika province are still fully controlled by the Taliban, while eight others have large areas under the movement's rule, which is undermining the mobility of residents and causing unemployment, a lack of public services and poor education in the collapsed districts
KABUL (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th March, 2020) Two out of 18 districts of Afghanistan's southeastern Paktika province are still fully controlled by the Taliban, while eight others have large areas under the movement's rule, which is undermining the mobility of residents and causing unemployment, a lack of public services and poor education in the collapsed districts.
According to Paktika's Milma Civil Foundation, the Gayan and Nika districts of the province have been completely collapsed since 2008, and the other eight Gomal, Wazikhwa, Tirmami, Tarwe, Khushmand, Omana, Barmal and Zirwak have only their buildings under the government's control.
Meanwhile, activities of governmental bodies or forces located in buildings under Kabul's control are limited with transportation to and from the provincial center being often hindered due to the risk of being ambushed.
"There are 10 districts, and two of them are collapsed and the rest are almost collapsed, do not have enough judicial organs, and people take their cases to village elders or to the Taliban," Mohamadullah Himatyar, a member of the Milma Civil Foundation, told Sputnik.
Manzoor Ahmad, a civil activist, told Sputnik that the current situation in the majority of Paktika's districts have negatively affected the local education system and caused the outflow of the workforce.
"The situation has adversely affected the education teachers' posts are vacant in schools, and no one is hired. Local illiterate people have fled [the districts] and illiterate people from other places do not want to work in Paktika," Ahmad said.
Criticism of the Afghan government over the lack of measures to tackle the problem is getting stronger in the province. However, the police told Sputnik that only the Nika district was completely collapsed.
"It would not be fair to say that 10 districts are collapsed, as only Nika district is in complete collapse. There is a military force in other districts, some of them are being supplied only once in a few months by air or land, but in four districts civil services are operating," police spokesman Shah Mohammad Aryan told Sputnik.
According to Bakhtiar Hemat, the provincial council chief, hundreds of positions in the province are currently vacant, although the unemployment rate in Paktika is also high.
"As far as we know, about 1,700 civilian posts are vacant, but thousands of Paktika people are jobless," Hemat told Sputnik.
At the same time, Ajmer Zalan, the head of the Paktika governor's office, specified to Sputnik that the situation on the local labor market was not only linked to the partial collapse of the number of provinces, but also to the need for administrative reforms.
"Yes, it is true that posts are empty or vacant, but some posts have the potential for administrative reforms. It will be announced soon that people will be hired for lower positions and positions in the public sector," he said.
However, a local reporter, Manor Bahadur, told Sputnik that many positions were vacant in the districts, where doing any job is difficult.
"Vacant posts are in districts where there are no living conditions. If someone goes from the center to a district, he or she cannot work [there.] The other important issue is that there are no [literate] people working there," he said.
Answering the question of why the security situation in the 10 districts of Paktika is ignored, the local police said that they had shared this issue with the government and that whenever a comprehensive plan was developed, the situation in the districts would get better.
