Peshawar:
The Government of Pakistan Tehreek-E-Insaf (PTI) in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has decided to fulfill the Federal Government’s decision on the repatriation of Afghan refugees.
However, it has been made clear that refugees would not be expatrified by the force of KP, but they would be given the opportunity to voluntarily return to their homeland.
For this, they will also be provided with the necessary facilities.
The central government has granted a deadline of March 31, 2025 to all Afghan refugees who are illegal or have registration test cards to leave Pakistan and return to Afghanistan.
In this sense, KP’s prime minister Ali Amin Gandapur had opposed federal government policy during a press conference in Peshawar recently.
However, the Express PAkGazette learned from very reliable sources in the provincial government that the Gandapur government would not interfere in any way with the policy implemented by the center regarding the return of Afghan refugees and that said policy would be followed.
The sources said that the provincial government would not forcefully expel Afghan refugees residing in different areas of the province, including Peshawar, and would send them to Afghanistan, but would provide them with the opportunity to leave Pakistan on their own and return to their homeland with dignity.
In this sense, the sources said that an office for these refugees on the border of Pak-Faghan in Torkham would be established so that they could travel to Afghanistan from there according to their travel documents and they would also be provided with the necessary travel facilities in that place.
The sources said that governments in Punjab and Islamabad were responsible for providing transportation and other facilities to Afghan refugees migrating from those areas.
It has also been reported that an important meeting will also be held in Peshawar next week in which issues related to the return of Afghan refugees to the country devastated by war will be discussed.
Background
On March 17, Pakistan had rejected a request from the Afghan Taliban to grant an extension in the stay of Afghan refugees.
Kabul has been transmitted in clear terms that Islamabad would fulfill its plan to deport all the headlines of the illegal and Afghan citizen card as of April 1.
In an important political decision, Pakistan on March 7 had announced that ACC holders had until March 31 to leave the country or face deportation. There are around 800,000 ACC holders in Pakistan, but, after March 31, they would be treated as illegal aliens.
The reports had been making rounds that Pakistan planned to evict all the country’s Afghan, but that was the first time that the Ministry of Interior officially confirmed the development.
“The illegal foreigners’s repatriation program (IFRP) has been implemented since November 1, 2023. In a continuation of the government’s decision to repatriate all illegal foreigners, national leadership has now also decided to repatriate the headlines of ACC,” said the official brochure of the Ministry issued on March 7.
