Ministry of Narcotics Control and Anti Narcotics Force in collaboration with the United Nations Organisation of Drug Control is launching a three-year project for the prevention of drug abuse and HIV/AIDS in prisons.
Sources told Business Recorder on Friday that the project, costing $497,000, was aimed at countering the problem of drug abuse and spread of HIV/AIDS in four prisons through interventions that would enable prisoners to make their own choices against drug abuse, prison life, HIV/AIDS and their own future.
The sources said that the project was expected to serve as a model for the implementation of similar interventions in other prisons on a larger scale and 75 percent of prisoners in the country are incarcerated for drug related offences.
The Ministry will also start a 180-hour course for law enforcement officials costing $0.6 million to counter drug trafficking. The project will cover risk assessment, interdiction techniques at land borders, ports and airports, the sources added.
The ministry also intends to strengthen controls on the movement of precursor chemicals required for heroine production in Afghanistan and also improve access to treatment for injecting drug users as part of a national programme to prevent drug related transmission of HIV/AIDS, they said.
They said that the number of drug addicts had increased from 4 to 5 million as a result of leakages along trafficking routes, the country has an estimated 0.5 million heroin addicts and there is a concentrated HIV epidemic among Pakistan's estimated 60,000 injecting drug users.
The ministry is working with United Nations systems to reduce drug-related transmission of HIV/AIDS. The UNODC is currently carrying out data analysis for the assessment and a draft report will be available by mid-April, the sources said.
The MoNC is also supporting work on the development of a National Drug Control Masterplan under the auspices of the ANF. They said the ministry was committed to strengthen policy and build institutional capacity for drug control and crime prevention, they said.
Current activities of the Ministry include assistance to further develop intelligence collection and analysis capacity with total cost of $1.1 million in the Anti Narcotics Force, the Frontier Corps Balochistan, the Frontier Corps NWFP and the Federal Investigation Agency, they said.
Pakistan remains a major transit country for Afghan opiates and ANF estimates that up to 36 percent of opiates trafficked from Afghanistan enter Pakistan as most of them are destined for countries in Western Europe, Africa and East Asia, they said.
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