Quetta: Thousands of miners have stopped work and many have fled Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan province since insurgents killed 10 Hazara workers at a colliery last month, officials said Thursday.
Labour organizations and government officials said up to 15,000 workers had downed tools since the murder of the Hazara group, forcing around 200 mines to close and slashing production.
More than 100 mines were “still non-functional,” said Abdullah Shehwani, the provincial head of coal mines.
More than 40,000 workers toil in hundreds of small mines in Baluchistan province — the country’s largest and poorest region, which is rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies.
Militant groups regularly extort protection money from colliery owners or kidnap workers for ransom. Failure to pay often results in deadly violence.
Refugees or economic migrants from Afghanistan make up a big part of the workforce — especially from the marginalized Hazara community.
Ten Hazara miners were kidnapped by gunmen from a remote colliery in early January before being taken to nearby hills where most were shot dead, and some beheaded.
It prompted huge protests among Hazaras, who make up most of the Shiite population in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan and less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Afghanistan border.
Their Central Asian features make them easy targets for Sunni militants, who consider them heretics.
“Local workers ask for high pay and owners have to pay them compensation, in case of any accident,” Habib Tahir, provincial chief of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told AFP.
“Afghan refugees... work in the coal mines for low pay.”
But Behroz Reiki, president of a mine owners’ association, said the current situation was also causing grave hardship for local communities.
“A closure of a coal mine means no jobs for the security guards and other employees — those who work in other sections, including drivers, helpers and others,” he said.
Atif Hussain, an official from the government’s mines department, insisted security had been beefed up.
“We have provided special security to the Hazara workers,” he said, adding: “Now they move in a police escort.”
Some mines had re-opened after government forces increased security, said MirDad Khel, the head of a local coal miners’ association, but many miners were still scared.
“Fifty percent of the workers are still reluctant to return... they are still jobless,” he told AFP.
“They don’t have money even for their day-to-day expenses — even for one meal.”
Pakistan coal miners reluctant to work after Hazara killings
https://arab.news/yr6p2
Pakistan coal miners reluctant to work after Hazara killings
- Thousands of miners have stopped work, many have fled Baluchistan province since insurgents killed 10 Hazara workers at a mine last month
- Labour organizations and government officials say 15,000 workers had downed tools forcing around 200 mines to close and slashing production
Four people, including two policemen, killed in twin blasts in northwest Pakistan
- Attack on police van in South Waziristan and motorbike-mounted IED in Lakki Marwat hits KP province
- Violence comes amid a surge in militancy and cross-border clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan
ISLAMABAD: At least four people, including two policemen, were killed and about 20 others wounded in two separate blasts in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Saturday, officials said, the latest violence in a region grappling with militant violence.
One explosion targeted a police patrol van in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan district near the Afghan border, while another blast caused by explosives mounted on a motorbike struck a market area in Lakki Marwat district, according to police officials and preliminary reports.
The incidents come amid rising militant violence in Pakistan’s northwest, where authorities say armed groups operate from across the border in Afghanistan, straining relations between Islamabad and the Taliban administration in Kabul, with both sides engaged in a military conflict since last month.
“The control room received information in the evening about a bomb blast targeting a police van in Wana Bazaar,” a police official in the area, who did not want to be named, confirmed while speaking to Arab News over the phone.
He confirmed two deaths in the incident while saying more than 25 people had been injured.
The official said rescue teams responded promptly and shifted three seriously injured people to a nearby hospital in Wana.
In another incident during the day in Lakki Marwat, an improvised explosive device attached to a motorbike exploded near shops.
“Two people have been killed and about 10 have been injured in an IED blast in Lakki Marwat,” Raza Khan, Deputy Superintendent of Police in Bannu, told Arab News.
“The deceased are identified as Shoaib Ur Rehman and Furqan Ullah,” he added. “Shoaib, the owner of the shop, was the brother of the Lakki peace committee head.”
Peace committees in the region are informal, community-based groups that work with security forces to report militant activity and maintain order, making their members frequent targets of attacks.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi condemned the attacks and expressed grief over the incidents.
“I strongly condemn the blast near a police patrolling vehicle in Wana Bazaar,” Naqvi said in a statement, confirming the killing of four people, including two police personnel.
“Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police are on the front line in the war against terrorism,” he said, noting the force had made “unforgettable sacrifices” in the fight against militant groups.
Militant violence has surged in Pakistan’s border regions in recent months, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces.
Islamabad has repeatedly accused the Afghan Taliban government of allowing militant groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), to operate from Afghan territory — a charge Kabul denies — as cross-border tensions between the two neighbors have escalated.
