DM Monitoring
KABUL: The Taliban government launched a programme on Sunday to tackle hunger, offering thousands of people wheat in exchange for labour.
The scheme will be rolled out around Afghanistan’s major towns and cities and employ 40,000 men in the capital alone, the Taliban’s chief spokesman said at a press conference in southern Kabul.
“This is an important step for fighting unemployment,” Zabihullah Mujahid said, adding that the labourers must “work hard”.
Afghanistan, which is already suffering from poverty, drought, electricity blackouts and a failing economic system, is now facing the onset of what may be a harsh winter.
The Taliban’s food-for-work scheme will not pay labourers, targeting those who are currently unemployed and most at risk of starvation during the winter.
The two-month programme will see 11,600 tons of wheat distributed in the capital, with about 55,000 tons for elsewhere in the country, including Herat, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif and Pol-i-Khomri.
Work for the labourers in Kabul will include digging water channels and catchment terraces for snow in the hills to combat drought.
Mujahid and other senior officials, including agriculture minister Abdul Rahman Rashid and Kabul mayor Hamdullah Nomani, cut a pink ribbon and dug a small ditch at a ceremony in the rural Rish Khor area of the capital to launch the programme.
Days earlier, Pakistan had announced several incentives for Afghanistan after Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s visit to Kabul.
Speaking at a news conference in Islamabad on Thursday, Qureshi had said it was his first visit to the Afghan capital since the formation of a new government and the meeting with the Taliban leadership was fruitful.
“I found the Taliban leadership very positive, and they acknowledged and thanked Pakistan for the efforts and help it has extended to Afghan refugees who have been living here for the past four decades,” Qureshi had said, adding, a number of issues relating to visas, trade, security and borders were discussed during the meeting with Afghanistan’s new leaders.
“Being an immediate neighbor, we want to help our Afghan brothers, and my visit today was part of that plan,” he said.
In order to support Afghan people and traders, Pakistan announced the elimination of all tariffs on fresh fruits and vegetables coming from Afghanistan.
Qureshi also said that Pakistani authorities would no longer require Afghans crossing the border to obtain a “gate pass” from the Interior Ministry and border crossings will now be open for pedestrian movement for 12 hours instead of eight.
Key border crossings will remain open 24 hours for trade, he added. He also announced a visa upon arrival for Afghan traders and people with medical emergencies, while the embassy in Kabul has been authorized to issue five-year multiple visas to Afghan traders.
