PESHAWAR: The United Nations has suspended its activities including humanitarian assistance to the internally displaced persons till Monday next in the wake of devastating bombing at Pearl Continental Hotel, sources say.
According to sources, the UN has communicated to all its employees to stay away from offices till Monday. A meeting of the UN will be held on Monday to review the situation and decide about resumption or stoppage of relief work for IDPs.
Sources said that the UN had evacuated its entire expatriate staff to Islamabad and the local employees had been asked to stay home till further orders.
Sources in the UN told Dawn that they had cancelled all their activities in Peshawar an elsewhere in NWFP due to the blast at a local five-star hotel on Tuesday night.
They said that suspension of relief work by the UN agencies at this stage would adversely affect the internally displaced persons because in all areas, including water, sanitation, shelter, food and health etc the UN had been playing major role.
‘Earlier, the UN offices in Peshawar were asked to remain closed for Wednesday, but later they were told about the new decision to remain off the office and fields till Monday,’ said officials.
They said that their activities regarding relief to IDPs could not be compromised. They hoped that UN would soon revive its decision of abandoning work in view of the help needed by million of IDPs from Swat, Buner and Dir districts of Malakand region.
Sources maintained that the decision to suspend work was taken after the death of at least five UN employees, including UNHCR, World Food Programme and United Nations Population Fund which had prompted the global agency to provide protection to its employees.
Sources said that the roles of WFP, World Health Organisation, UNHCR and UNICEF were extremely vital for the IDPs and the provincial government had been persuading the high-ranking officials of the UN to rescind the decision and ask its staffers to get back to field work.
At the time of the blast, officials of the WFP, UNHCR and UNFPA, who had arrived in Peshawar, were present at the hotel to take stock of the IDPs situation, sources added.
Sources said that WFP had lost three of its staffers in the explosion besides two employees including a woman of UNICEF and UNHCR were also killed. Two drivers of the UNFPA were also killed in the blast and three UN employees sustained injuries in the blast, they said.
Sources said that NWFP had been placed in phase-III of the UN security from the past several months due to law and order situation and the expatriate staff had been asked to stay away from Peshawar.
In the next security phase, the UN would completely halt its operations that could deal a severe blow to the government’s relief work at IDP camps, they added.
However, after the military operation in Malakand and subsequent mass exoduses from the region, the UN expatriate staff began arriving here to take part in high-level meetings with the officials regarding the relief activities at the camps established for IDPs, they added.
The World Food Programme (WFP) had suspended work at food distribution points for internally displaced persons (IDPs) of Swat and Buner here on Wednesday due to killing of the UN officials in the explosion in a five-star hotel in Peshawar on Tuesday.
Officials at WFP distribution points told Dawn that work remained suspended from June 5 to June 9 and they were told that food supply would be resumed on Wednesday but the whole scenario was changed after Peshawar blast.
A number of displaced persons visited the WFP food points. However, after confirming the suspension of food supply the visiting displaced persons were told by the WFP staff that they got the order from the high-ranking officials that there would be no food distribution till further order.
The WFP staff said that there all preparations were completed and even the wheat supply to their stores had been completed during the five-day break.
The officials said that they were not in a position to tell the IDPs that they should visit the food distribution point on a particular day.
The IDPs said that those who were responsible for the destruction of the five-star hostel should be punished by the government. They demanded an immediate resumption of the food supply.
No comments:
Post a Comment