‘Now more than 30 licences can be issued every day’

To get rid of fake arms licences, home department and Nadra have installed a computerised licence management system.

KARACHI: Sindh Home Minister became the proud owner of the first computerised arms licence on Wednesday. “The number of licences would go up from 50 in a month to 30 in a day because of the new computerised system,” Zulfiqar Ali Mirza said.

In an effort to get rid of fake arms licences, the home department, and the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA), have installed a computerised arms licence management system at a cost of Rs22.5 million.

The system has been set up at the home department and first, manual licences in Karachi would be computerised followed by those  in five more districts.

Applicants would be required to appear in person before the call centre, where their biometric information would be taken. The documents and information of the applicants would be scanned and stored in the servers of NADRA and the home department. Before a computerised licence is issued, details of previous licences and weapons would also be recorded.

The Crime Investigation Department’s SP Mazhar Mashwani felt that the new licenses would be much more helpful for policemen deputed with snap checking. “With a phone call, now we can verify the licence within a minute,” Mashwani said. “Usually, the police allow people to go after they check the manual licence but even the police themselves are not sure if these are real.”

Consultant on Home Affairs Sharfuddin Memon told The Express Tribune that initially only people applying for new licences would get computerised ones. Those who already have the manual licences would only be able to get the digitalised versions. “When they come to us to get their licences renewed, we will cancel the manual licence and replace it with a computerised one.”

Arms dealers in Karachi believe that this system would help but they stressed that the process of replacing manual licences should be verified properly to avoid replacement of fake licences. “Some fake manual licences could be computerised accidentally,” said a dealer.

The new system must coordinate with dealers as well. “Every licence holder has a limit on the number of bullets issued annually and when new bullets are given, we stamp the holder’s licence,” he added.

Memon assured that the management would coordinate with the arms dealers.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s (MQM) Faisal Subzwari said that his party appreciated the step taken by the department. The MQM believes in this technology, he said, adding that the de-weaponisation bill they submitted clearly mentions that the first step should be to get rid of all the illegal weapons and then, all legal licences should be cancelled to make the country arms-free.

Public complaint centre

Mirza also inaugurated the Public Complaint Centre (PCC) at the Artillery Maidan police station. The centre would deal with all kinds of complaints, he said.

“It was the demand of the people of Karachi that there should be a centre where they can file complaints against the police as well as against crimes,” said Mirza.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3^rd,  2011.