CLCP Protest North and South Waziristan Tribal Distts

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is appreciated by local masses of newly merged tribal districts as huge amount of at least Rs24 billion has been paid to the people for their losses in military operations. The government under the Citizens Losses Compensation Programme (CLCP) is in full swing to provide relief and compensation to the tribal people for their damaged and lost properties.
It is important to mention that the Citizen Losses Compensation Programme (CLCP) is an initiative launched by the federal government across the tribal districts in 2015 to award compensation to the masses that have lost their properties during the military operation conducted in the tribal areas.
The Prime Minister Imran Khan had urged entire nation and other provinces to support the economics and infrastructure development of the war-ravaged tribal districts. He had suggested that all the provinces should allocate 3% of their share under NFC for the development of tribal regions.
According to the representative of concern department Habib Shah, the government under CLCP has paid a total of Rs 3.539 billion of compensation to the people of Mirali and Miramshah regions of North Waziristan. As per the reports, a huge amount of Rs 12 billion have been distributed in South Wazirstan district amongst the owners of over 34,000 complete and partially damaged houses. In Orakzai district total of Rs 3.7 billion have been paid to the owners of over 10,000 houses for complete and partially damaged houses. A total of Rs 2.6 billion and Rs 1.7 billion have been paid to the masses for their destroyed homes in Khyber and Kurram district respectively.
On other hand, since last 40 days, a considerable strength of South Waziristan people is protesting in Tank against lack of survey of damaged houses, properties and non-payment of compensation. The protesters despite payments of compensation at a large scale are still not convinced and have presented a draft of demands from the government.
Their demands include; payments of their destroyed property with three times higher price than the one fixed by the government, they are demanding payment without any proper channel or procedure and asking government to pay it as soon as possible.
Besides, their new demands the protesters have also threatened to continue boycott of polio vaccination campaigns in South Waziristan, other tribal districts, settled districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well as in Karachi until their demands about the survey of damages and compensation are accepted.
The protesters said the people of Mehsud tribe are fully supporting them for their demands and they will also not vaccinate their children till the demands are accepted. They said if any government official wants to talk with them then he would have to come to the protest camp.
However, as we contacted a local man of the South Wazirstan district named Farood Khan for his views about the issue, he commented that the government was going on a right track and people were getting paid through a slow and steady pace for their damaged properties.
While answering a question he said that it is a fact that the government is a bit slow in paying the compensation but on other hand local people were also wrong by demanding the full amount at once.
He revealed that the demands of South and North Wazirstan districts protestors are very difficult to fulfill as the government cannot pay such huge amounts immediately, it would affect the economy of the entire province and even country.
Meanwhile, a tribal journalist Malik Habib told us that the people should wait for their turn because it was a proper procedure under which the payments to affected people were taking place. He stated that there were some shortcomings in payment distribution procedure, but the people of tribal districts have also been fueled by some groups to achieve their own political goals.
He further said that many people have been forced by some groups to ask the government for compensation of lost livestock and other damages occurred during the military operations. He added that these are the demands which cannot be fulfilled by the government as it is not under the preview of CLCP programme.
Talking about the groups, he revealed that these were the workers of some local political parties including ANP, PPP and groups like PTM who were forcing the locals to stand against the government and sabotage the process of compensation.
He further said that all the issues were moving towards settlement, but the only issue persisted was the price of the land loss; adding that the government had fixed Rs 1.5 million for a Marla and the people were demanding Rs 4.5 million per Marla for their land loss, which appears to be very high.
While answering a question he said that the sit-in participants were nothing more than a group of Mafia who want to blackmail the government to accept their illegal demands.