Hamstrung operations: Fund constraints limit police intelligence gathering

Secret Service Fund is reserved for intelligence and rewarding people

PESHAWAR: The Secret Service Fund, once considered an integral part of policing, has fallen prey to typical negligence in Khyber-Pakhtunkwa over the decades.

As a discretionary fund for the district police officer (DPO) and is primarily reserved for intelligence and rewarding people who cooperate with the police to arrest criminals.

A district receives around Rs38,000 annually under the funds while smaller districts get as low as Rs25,000 per annum, a police official told The Express Tribune.

“The fund is meant to enable a DPO or SSP to hire informers and then reward them if they perform well or to pay those locals who cooperate with police against criminals,” a DPO, wishing not to be named said.

He added that since in the past intelligence gathering was considered a crucial part of policing, sufficient funds were provided to police officers but the situation has changed over the years.

The DPO stated that taking into account inflation in the country Rs38,000 was barely sufficient to pay two people per month leave alone supporting intelligence activity round the year.

“As DPOs we have no intelligence on our own. We rely on other departments for this purpose who warn and regularly share reports with us but certain situations demand that we have our own intelligence gathering and our ability in this regard is very limited due to the lack of funds,” he added.

In contrast, another DPO complained that since the fund is at the discretion of the officers it is often not used for intelligence but for other purposes.

“Our expenditures have increased 50-fold following IGP Nasir Khan Durrani’s measure taken in regards to Public Police Liaison Committees and Dispute Resolution Councils (DRCs). We have around 300 members in each district and we don’t have enough funds to call a DRC meeting every month,” he said adding that they are them forced to use money allocated under other heads to fulfil their requirements.

“We use money from other heads like SSF as it is discretionary,” the DPO added.

“Despite an increase in police budget in recent years we have limited funds,” he said adding that police should be provided with enough funds to meet its day-to-day operation expenditures and also support other activities like limited intelligence gathering.

“Today local residents are afraid to cooperate with police against criminals and militancy. This could be reversed if there are financial rewards for them but unfortunately there is no channel to do so,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 20^th, 2016.