NA meeting reveals loss of more than 6,000 lives in war against terror in FATA

ISLAMABAD: At least 6,112 people from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have been killed while 6,707 others have suffered from injuries ever since the commencement of the war against terror in 2001, Pakistani lawmakers were told Officials of Fata law and order division disclosed these statistics while briefing the parliamentarians during the National Assembly’s standing committee meeting on the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) in Islamabad, reported the media. “Rupees 3 million were given to each family of the martyred government employees between 2001 to 2015”, said FATA officials, adding that each martyrs family was also given a residential plot worth Rs 2 million in addition to the usual Rs 3 million compensation amount, after 2015 and that there are still 54 pending compensation cases before courts. Aside from this, the government under the Citizen Losses Compensation Programme is also providing Rs 400,000 and Rs 160,000 to those FATA residents whose houses were completely and partially damaged due to militancy. The ministry went on to state that Rs 6.3 billion was released to the political administrations of five agencies where Internally Displaced People (IDPs) had started returning, by the FATA Secretariat; adding that a further Rs 5.27 billion had been distributed among 15,139 beneficiaries. Recently, an amount of Rs 50 million has been approved to rehabilitate mosques in South Waziristan.