Skewed priorities: One-fourth of total force deputed for policing duties

Only 8,000 of 33,000 Karachi cops deployed at police stations

KARACHI: There are only 8,000 ‘effective’ personnel to perform duties at police stations in Karachi, which has a population of over 20 million, revealed ASP Clifton-Boat Basin on Thursday.

The young officer, Tariq Nawaz, who recently joined the Police Service of Pakistan, was speaking at a meeting organised by an NGO, Shehri, on police reforms in Sindh.

Talking on the subject, Nawaz said though the city police have a contingent of 33,000 personnel, around 75% are deployed on duties other than manning police stations.



“For every special deployment, personnel are taken from the police stations. This way the police station system is getting weaker,” he claimed, adding that the basic unit of policing — the thana — is already short on facilities.

The officer said unless police stations are strengthened both with manpower as well as facilities, improvement in the system will remain a distant dream.

He lamented that promotional exams for junior officers had not been conducted for the past five years due to various reasons, and the department only recently held exams for constables.

Provincial lawmakers from Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) were also present during the meeting. MQM MPA Syed Khalid Ahmed said dodgy recruitments are the core issue in the police department from where the problem intensifies. “Locals should be hired in the police from their respective areas. This is an internationally accepted system,” he said, adding that politicians should have no role in the induction process which should be based purely on merit.



PTI’s Khurram Sher Zaman also spoke against political intervention in policing matters, saying police personnel need to be given sufficient salaries and provided all necessary facilities.

Zaman mentioned that a police station in the crime-infested Lyari has only 13 personnel due to a shortage of human resources in the department.

A police officer of the rank of SP, currently tasked with the training of new recruits, commented that the policing system deteriorated because of ‘faults within ourselves’.

He cited corruption, nepotism and ineffectiveness of administrators at almost all levels within the department as the reason behind the decay. The moderator of the session, Gulmina Bilal Ahmed, concluded the talk with seeking commitments from sitting lawmakers over tabling a reforms bill in the provincial assembly, to which they agreed.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2016.