Ashrafuddin Pirzada
KHYBER AGENCY: Afghan Patients and their attendants and some of the
far-off areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(Fata) continue to face problems at the hands of not only swindlers but also
greedy policemen.
Complaining from the situation created by greedy policemen, doctor
said that his fifty percent patients were coming from Afghanistan but looted at
check posts created from Torkham to Peshawar.
Dr Mohammad Shafique, noted psychiatrist who
for years has been running a clinic in Tehkal on the busy Jamrud Road, said his
patients and their attendants have been complaining to him about rising number
of incidents in which they are deprived of money that they bring to seek
treatment.
“On August 3, two of my patients were robbed
by swindlers. One of them was 40-year old Jawad from Afghanistan’s Herat
province. He started crying in our clinic and wondered how he would now pay for
the journey back home as he had been deprived of his money. Jawad had come with
a patient and was deeply concerned as he had no money left to pay for his
expenses,” Dr Shafique recalled.
“Hardly a day goes when someone visiting our clinic isn’t robbed
of money. We alerted our employees and tried to tackle the problem, but it only
temporarily and partly stopped the practice and that too in the vicinity of the
clinic,” he said. He added that Afghans coming all the way from Afghanistan for
treatment and patients and their attendants from Waziristan and other tribal
areas were the biggest victims of the swindlers, fraudsters and even some cops
as they are considered vulnerable and in some cases naïve.
Dr Shafique isn’t the first physician to complain about such
street crimes as other doctors and hospitals too have spoken about it and
brought it to the notice of the police, government officials and the media.
Doctors at the Rahman Medical Institute (RMI) and Northwest Hospital, the two
well-known private hospitals in Hayatabad town, often narrate stories of Afghan
patients getting robbed at the hands of the policemen, militiamen and
swindlers. The Afghans prefer to come to Pakistan, particularly Peshawar, for
seeking treatment due to a host of reasons, but they sometime regret coming here
after experiencing problems the moment they cross over from Afghanistan at
Torkham. All those deputed on the border, on the road to Peshawar and in the
city itself could stop them for identity checks and the greedy and corrupt
among them could demand money for letting them go. The patients and their
attendants prefer to spend all the time in these hospitals due to fear that
they could be harassed or robbed outside.
The authorities, particularly the police, promise action against
the corrupt elements in the ranks but the situation hasn’t improved. Pakistan
risks losing not only the Afghan patients, but also goodwill of the Afghans if
proper measures weren’t taken to stop the marauding policemen and the
swindlers, who seem unafraid of the law.
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