The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has warned Bajaur tribal elders of strict action if they refused to withdraw a local jirga decision of banning women from collecting cash stipends by themselves and making telephone calls to the local FM radio stations.
The warning came on the weekend after a jirga in Mamond tehsil’s Warah area banned local women from collecting cash stipends from the collection centers set up by the World Bank under a cash grant scheme and making phone calls to the local FM stations insisting the acts are against local customs. It also announced fines for ban violators.
The spokesperson for the KP government, Kamran Khan Bangash, said the constitution has no provision for jirgas.
He said that the government had tasked the divisional commissioner and deputy commissioner of Bajaur tribal district to persuade tribesmen to withdraw their decision or else action would be taken against them under the law.
There is no justification left for holding jirgas to decide matters after the tribal region’s merger with the province. Only the district administration is empowered to take decisions at tehsil and district levels and jirgas have no legality.
He suggested Jirga elders take the district administration into confidence before making such decisions, adding that the decision was against the law and Constitution.
The Jirga also ruled that women’s arrival at cash collecting points every month to receive the Child Wellness Grant was against the local customs. The tribal elders said that they had repeatedly requested the program management to either hand over the amount to male members of their families or arrange women staff members at centers operated under the Sada-e-Amn program of the bank but to no avail.
In light of this development, the tribal Jirga banned women from going to the center to collect cash and imposed Rs. 10,000 fine on people who let their female family members visit the collection point. Another Rs. 10,000 fine was imposed on the family of any woman, who called the local FM radio stations over the telephone.
Deputy Commissioner Bajaur, Fayyaz Khan, reporters that the district administration had taken serious notice of the ban and strongly condemned it.
Declaring the bans ‘a matter of serious concern,’ he said that the Jirga decision was totally against fundamental human rights.
The decision of elders is stupid and unlawful. No one has the right to ban the movement of women in the region after the merger of tribal districts with the province and the extension of the country’s regular judicial system in the region.
He termed it an attempt to take the law into their hands and asked
Mr. Fayyaz said the elders’ decision was an attempt to take the law into their own hands, which the administration would never allow.
He said the tribal elders should have approached the local administration if they had any issue with the program, but they never complained about it, instead placed a ban on it on Saturday.
He maintained that after the merger of tribal areas with KP, no Jirga decision holds legal status.
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