Pak hints at abandoning development projects in Kabul

Pakistan has indicated Kabul that it could abandon work on development projects in Afghanistan in wake of the harassment of its workers in the nation.

A Pakistani official in Kabul said that the authorities in the Logar province detained earlier this week an engineer, working on a Pakistan-funded hospital, for nearly five hours.

As many as forty-five Pakistani workers, including engineers, are involved in construction of the 14 million dollars Naeb Aminullah Khan Logari Hospital in Logar province.

The Pakistani official said the police claimed that an electrical machine could be used by the workers for spreading the menace of terrorism.

"Pakistani contractors explained to the police officer that the machine is used only for electrical purposes but the police officer was adamant on his view and took the site engineer to the police station," the Express Tribune quoted a Pakistani official said.

Stating that the Afghan Government is lax on ensuring security for the Pakistani workers, he pointed out that several of them have been killed and kidnapped in the past.

Meanwhile, Afghan Ambassador Omar Zakhilwal said that the situation should not be generalized based on one incident.

"We should not generalise [based on] one isolated incident of a worker detained and then released within a few hours to all Pakistani workers in Afghanistan," he said.