Efforts on to find jobs for rehabilitated drug addicts

HERAT CITY (Pajhwok): Counter-narcotics officials in western Herat province say they are striving to provide jobs for rehabilitated drugs addicts to prevent them from relapsing into the practice.

Maulvi Hayatullah Rohani, director of counter-narcotics, told Pajhwok Afghan News many individuals turned to drug addiction because their homes and families were not known.

In an effort to prevent rehabilitated people’s relapse into drug addiction, Rohani said he had held talks with factory owners in the industrial town on providing them with work.

Addicts being sick people also needed work opportunities in addition to medical treatment.

Some addicts, who are under treatment, are happy with the process of their collection from different parts of the city. They want to return to a normal life.

Almost every addict has a painful story and calls addition the worst period of life. Talking to Pajhwok, some say they slipped into addiction while living in other countries.

Latif, a resident of Herat City, is currently under treatment. He has been consuming drugs for 15 years. He used opium for five years in Iran and 10 years in Herat.

Latif said he had no information regarding his family’s whereabouts. He commented he was no longer alive for his immediate relatives.

Another drug addict, Ali, recalled he enjoyed living in Iran before he started taking narcotics. He was arrested for taking drugs after he joined bad people’s company.

“Since I am an addict, I have always lived in ruined places and have found nothing but destruction, poverty and dishonor,” the man added.

He urged the government to expand the drive to collect drug addicts. Providing jobs for addicts after their rehabilitation was an imperative he believed.

At the same time, addicts under treatment at private rehab facilities want the authorities to ensure their full recovery.

Atiqullah Dost, in charge of one rehabilitation centre, said it had been a month and a half that he received 90 addicts under treatment.

He added officials must draw up programmes for them so that they did not return to addiction.

Meanwhile, a number of residents welcomed the collection of addicts and said the campaign had led to order and cleanliness in the province.

Herat inhabitants opined if addicts in the city had not been rounded up in the harsh cold weather, many of them would have died.

Thousands of drug addicts have been rounded up in different provinces of the country since the beginning of the campaign.

According counter-narcotics officials, 4,6000 drug addicts have been collected and sent to 22 private rehabilitation centres in Herat alone with support from the government and businessmen.

There are about 70,000 drug addicts in the province, including women and children.

sa/mud