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A protest was held at the Pak-Afghan Torkham border on Monday with protestors demanding to restart their cross-border movement and ban the visa requirements of workers.
Hundreds of jobless daily wagers gathered at the Nadra Chowk, holding black flags, chanting slogans and calling for relaxing the visa restriction of workers and the unnecessary raids of anti-narcotics, the Dawn reported. Speaking on the occasion, labour leaders and local elders condemned the restrictions imposed on the daily wagers' movement recently, which they said had rendered most of them jobless. The protestors accused immigration and National Logistics Cell staff of misbehaving with the labourers and also subjecting them to torture in order to prevent them from going near the border. They demanded the federal government end the visa restriction, allowing the daily wagers to restart their cross-border movement with token cards issued to them by the Nadra office as was the practice before the imposition of the ban. The local elders said that the Federal Investigation Authority staff at Torkham misbehaved with them when they tried to negotiate the immigration issue of certain Afghans stranded at the border for two days, the Dawn reported. "The FIA staffers, instead of listening to their argument about the plight of the stranded Afghans, used foul language and forced them to leave their offices.," they alleged, demanding the FIA high-ups to investigate the matter and take action against the guilty staffers, the Dawn reported. During the protest, labour unions and the leading leaders of the national level Najib Khavarichan, Barkatullah Akhtar Nawaz, Qari Nazim Gul Farman Shinwari and others participated. Torkham border connects Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) with Afghanistan's Nangarhar province. The local authorities had imposed an immediate ban on cross-border movement on the basis of the Afghan NICs. The humanitarian situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated drastically since the Taliban took control of Kabul last year in mid-August. Owing to security concerns, Pakistan authorities closed the cross-order movement as the Taliban took over Afghanistan. (ANI)
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