In Karachi, e-policing may soon end the ‘chai-paani’ game
But things are about to change. Soon, the policemen may not be able to get away at least with simple excuses like “stationary nahi hai” (there is no pen or paper) or “register photocopy k liye gaya hai” (register is out for Photostat).
By the end of this year, the Sindh police expect to finish off with the networking of their stations in Karachi and officially start registering computerised first information reports (FIRs) of the cases.
The Rs940-million “e-policing project” finally got the go-ahead in 2008 aiming to streamline a number of in-house tasks of the police department, including the documentation and computerisation of the entire organisational process and records. The project included traffic management, call centres for rescue service, video conferencing system, software development and prison department’s automation. It also envisaged connectivity between courts and police for swift access to the database of criminals.
“E-policing is a huge project and has many components,” says Tabassum Abid, who heads the Sindh police’s information technology department. “The initial process of computerised registration of FIRs is at its last stage.”
In the first phase, few police stations have been interconnected and more police stations from the city and rural areas will be brought into the system gradually. All police stations across Sindh are to be interlinked with the central database server set up at the Central Police Office (CPO).
According to Abid, the networking system has been completed in 45 police stations of Karachi where policemen are operating on experimental basis. At these police stations, training courses are being held for data-entry operators on how to register FIRs on the computers. She admitted, however, that the system still has some minor technical and non-technical issues related to software and hardware.
The Sindh police have also hired trainers district-wise, so that if any computer operator is transferred, the newcomer can be trained. The police stations can only access their own database while the CPO will have access to information at all police stations.
In order to facilitate citizens and improving standards of policing, Abid explained, the software would have the FIRs both in English and Urdu languages and the use of registers would be done away with. “The old cases will be entered into the system gradually,” she said. “Anyone who wants a copy of the FIR will be given a scanned copy which will be considered a legal one.”
A data entry operator at the Kharadar police station appreciated the e-policing project. “This will ease our workload considerably as we have to go through piles of old registers to find an old case,” he said. “This will save time.”
On Saturday, police officials were ordered to start registering the cases on computers by the Sindh inspector general of police, Fayyaz Leghari. He was examining the progress report at his office.
All district and divisional SSPs were directed to ensure availability of FIR registration forms at the Sindh police website and in the drop boxes outside their offices. The officers were warned of disciplinary action if any of them was found causing inordinate delays in registering public complaints.
E-policing certainly aims to facilitate citizens and improve standards of policing, but will it not give another reason to the police to delay FIRs on the excuse of power outage?
Published in The Express Tribune, September 3rd, 2012.
COMMENTS (12)
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Alhumdulilah!
i foresee policemen beating suspects with ipads
What about recruitment? Are we going to deal with the same old staff? still?
Who will register the FIR? An angel from the heaven On which media you get the copy of FIR - whether it will be in soft form or a hard copy. (Guess) Who will provide the electric to these machines - a company owned and run by the angels not KESC. How these will be connected to internet - Who will monitor the registration of FIR
And there are lot of other questions like these, can any one give a plausible response.
e-policing will not be any good unless the usual attitude of policeman changes.
seems like it will be put on a halt, as elections are coming then new government and eventually new piles of words will be spoken once again!!
Pen and paper can go short at the police stations: So can electricity, internet and so on. There will be more ways and execuses to sabotage a computer based system.
How will they stop silly kids registering fake complaints
Why is it that I always feel reading this kind of stuff as if I am reading the newspaper of my own country?
this is so beyond excellent that i dont even have the words to describe it. the ONLY ONLY way to go around pakistani corruption is to make the technology that monitors so complicated that most people cant circumvent it. we need to do it for everything, fom police to paying bills to lodging complaints to getting connections to getting passports/cnics and whatever else comes in between. i am a very strong proponent of using computerized electoral machines. these will revolutionize pakistani politics and i suspect lots of current sitting MNA will lose their seats if the real votes of the people are counted rather than the bogus ones.