ISLAMABAD: Afghans fleeing Pakistan to avoid arrest and deportation are sleeping in the open, without proper shelter, food, drinking water and toilets once they cross the border to their homeland, aid agencies said on Sunday.
Hundreds of thousands of Afghans have left Pakistan in recent weeks as authorities pursue foreigners they say are in the country illegally, going door-to-door to check migrants’ documentation. Pakistan had set October 31 as a deadline to leave the country.
Aid agencies said Torkham border crossing had no proper shelter. There is limited access to drinking water, no heating source other than open fires, no lighting and no toilets. There is open defecation and poor hygiene. UN agencies and aid groups are setting up facilities to help them.
Thamindri Da Silva, from the relief and development organisation World Vision International, said most people are moved to a dry riverbed once they have gone through their initial registration at a transit centre.
People enter Afghanistan with just the clothes on their back because their watches, jewellery and cash were taken at the Pakistani border, she added.
Arshad Malik, country director for Save the Children, said child labour in Afghanistan as well as their involvement in smuggling are likely to increase due to poverty.