Peshawar, Jul 22 (PTI) The government in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Wednesday decided to provide an assistance of Rs 15 crores to minorities like Hindus, Sikhs and Christians for setting up their businesses.

Special Assistant to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister on Minorities Said Wazir Zada made the announcement during a meeting here.

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The provincial government decided to provide financial assistance of Rs 100 million (10 crores) to minorities of recently merged districts and allocated Rs 50 million (5 crores) to minorities of the settled areas.

Merged districts are those seven tribal agencies that became the part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after the merger of Federally Administered Tribal Areas in the province.

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Settle districts are those which were already the part of the province before the merger.

Zada said the provincial government would also launch a housing scheme for minorities.

"No compromise would be made on the quality of welfare-oriented schemes," he said.

The meeting was told that 800 families of the merged districts would be given 10,000 each under grant-in-aid and 100 deserving families would be provided Rs 50,000 each under marriage grant.

Orphans from the minority communities would be given Rs. 5000 each.

The meeting among others was attended by minority Members of Provincial Assembly, including Ravi Kumar and Ranjeet Singh.

Sikhs are the largest minority group in the province followed by Hindus and Christians. PTI AYZ

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)