Enthusiasm for repatriation leads to delays

Many thousands of Afghan refugees are waiting in long queues as a result of unexpected enthusiasm for UNHCR's voluntary repatriation drive at the Takhtabaig voluntary repatriation centre (VRC) near Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) on Wednesday.

Afghan journalist Muhammad Zahir Babri, who visited the site on Wednesday, told IRIN that thousands of families with their belonging loaded onto vehicles were waiting their turn for registration. "Some families have been waiting for more than two days and the general mood was chaotic," he said.

"Most of the people I talked to are genuinely interested in resettling in their homeland," he said. "I felt that repatriating people did not know very well about the programme," Babri added.

As part of the initial UNHCR-sponsored process, refugees at Takhtabaig receive registration papers entitling them to receive a cash grant, food supplies and a repatriation package once they arrive back in Afghanistan. The papers also serve as identity documents for the whole family.

Commenting on the issue, Melita Sunjic, spokeswomen for UNHCR, told IRIN that there were some 4,000 refugee families in Takhtabaig VRC on Wednesday, - equal to the total number of families processed for repatriation last week.

"The planning capacity was to process 1,000 families per day but we registered some 1,300 families on Tuesday," she said, adding that some delays were caused by the "fake returnees" who wanted to benefit from the UNHCR package but did not genuinely intend to return.

Asked where most of the returnee families go once inside Afghanistan, she explained that the majority went to the capital Kabul. "Despite our attempts to discourage return to the eastern province of Nangarhar because of the security situation, it is receiving the second largest number of returnees," she added.

Under the joint UNHCR and Pakistani government programme, of the seven VRCs in the country, four will be in NWFP, two in the southwest province of Baluchistan and one in the southern commercial city of Karachi.