KABUL- he majority of Afghans want newly elected President Ashraf Ghani to prioritize security in his first days of office, says a new survey conducted by the 8AM newspaper.

According to the survey, which was conducted among 6,000 randomly selected Afghans across all 34 provinces, 45 percent of respondents want the new president to focus more on security than any other issue. The next highest rated issue was employment.

With the NATO coalition drawing down in anticipation of the end of its combat mission in December, security concerns increased when the Taliban launched a surge of offensives around the country over the summer. Many experts at the time cited the ongoing election process as a reason for why the security climate at the time deteriorated so rapidly.

The newspaper survey was conducted three months ago just before the inauguration ceremony, with results only being made public recently.

"Major indexes were taken into consideration in this survey, the most important of which was security," 8AM Editor-in-Chief Parwiz Kawa said. "The other issue is the creation of employment for people, and improving education and high education along with freedom of speech and human rights and foreign policy were also among the indicators."

Based on the survey, 45 percent of respondents asked the president to put security as the top priority of his government, while 29 percent asked for increased employment opportunities. Then 11 percent asked for improving education to be the top priority, and 2.4 percent topped their list with freedom of speech and human rights.

Thirty one percent of the respondents were females, and 52percent were between the ages of 18 and 30. (Tolonews)