VSO worker flees Pakistan

THE threat of nuclear war has forced a VSO worker out of Pakistan for the second time in a year ... but this time it looks as if she won't be returning.

Anne Grigg only returned to Lahore in March having been evacuated after the terrorist attacks on New York's twin towers last September.

It was the threat of nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India that led to warnings from the British High Commission and the latest evacuation.

Now Anne knows her work as a probation development officer for Voluntary Services Overseas will never be completed because the organisation has decided it is not viable, for a second time, to keep workers waiting for several months before going back.

So having received four days notice of her return to England she gave away everything in her Lahore flat, said her farewells and returned home. Anne intends to spend the next few weeks visiting friends and relatives and then return to her home at Fir Grove Road, Cross in Hand.

It is possible that later in the year she will return to Tonga in the South Pacific, scene of her first VSO posting, where she set up a probation service. New probation officers are being recruited there and she might be able to help train them.

PICTURE: Anne has many happy memories of her time in Pakistan including a celebration in April of her 65th birthday when she took colleagues out for 'high tea' at the Pearl Continental Hotel.