PESHAWAR - The international community is not helping the Afghan living in Pakistan the way it is supporting refugees in Turkey, a Pakistani minister claimed on Friday.
Minister for States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) Abdul Qadir Baloch said: “The world pays us half a dollar per year for education and one dollar annually per head for Afghan refugees.”
In an interview with the state-run Pakistan Television (PTV), he said under the 1951 Refugee Law, bearing expenses of refugees was the international community’s responsibility.
The global fraternity considered only 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees as “our burden while non-registered refugees are omitted”.
No registered Afghan refugee was involved in terrorism or beggary, the minister explained. “There is no beggar or terrorist among them … I am not talking about illegal refugees.”
He rejected as unworkable suggestions that the Afghans born here should be granted Pakistani citizenship. Citizenship is granted on a birth basis but such a law does not exist in Pakistan.
“Some countries give citizenship to the people born there, but the UAE, Saudi Arabia and a number of other countries don’t practice this law, which does not exist in Pakistan either,” Baloch maintained.(Pajhwok)