Cleaning up the police

The Sindh Police recently dismissed 1,800 personnel hired as reserves between 2012 and 2014 for being appointed illegally. In a statement to the home department’s standing committee, the IG Sindh stated that wrongdoings in the hiring process were revealed when it was found that 80 per cent of the appointees were said to belong to the same district while 400 supposedly had identical physical measurements. This was all allegedly done at the behest of senior police officials who had received bribes to issue fake appointment letters. The IG has promised that these officials will be given “exemplary punishment”. Strong words from an organisation which failed to detect wrongdoings in its hiring procedure for over two years after the fact.

The development raises significant questions regarding the checks and controls in place within the Sindh Police to ensure fair hiring. Is there no way to independently verify the documents provided by applicants? What about internal and external audit mechanisms to ensure that hiring processes are not circumvented? And finally, why did it take so long for this blatant corruption to be revealed? The last question can be answered if one takes into account that the country’s police departments suffer from systemic corruption at all levels, some of which comes to light but most gets ignored simply because it is so blatant that it is considered to be a built-in feature of the system. In theory, hiring processes in government departments are supposed to be stringent because there are several mechanisms in place to give an equal chance to all candidates, methods to detect flaws and frauds, and accountability after the process has been completed to ensure fairness. That senior officials in a police department can get away with issuing fake appointments to 1,800 individuals and not be held accountable for years, goes to show how deep the rot is. One wonders what ‘exemplary punishment’ will fit this flagrant crime committed by the very officials who are meant to protect public interest.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 15^th, 2016.

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