PHOTO COURTESY: WISHLIST
Officials of the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) and police have expressed strong reservations after several of the officers involved in laying the groundwork for the computerisation project were sidelined.
A senior officer of Punjab police told The Express Tribune the awards for digitalisation of police stations were given to officers, who had practically no role in thinking up ideas, building software or its practical manifestations.
Three officers of the Central Police Office – Hussain Habib, Shahid Hanif and Syed Khurram Shah – were given awards by the prime minister on Saturday, when he inaugurated the project.
The Punjab police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Khurram was the AIG Complaints and monitored the 8787 call centre, Habib was the project director of front desks while Shahid was the DIG Information Technology.
All the software and training of police were arranged by the PITB led by its chairperson Dr Umar Saif, software development head Burhan Rasool, and computerisation project head Faisal Yousuf and Director Software Engineering Adil Iqbal Khan. However, none of them were given any awards or credit.
To boot, the Lahore police officers who played a significant role in the project, initially started in Lahore in 2014, were also neglected. CCPO Amin Wains, DIG Operations Dr Haider Ashraf, DIG Investigations Sultan Chaudhry, then SP Model Town Mustansir Feroz, then SP City Haroon Joiya, then SP Crime Registration Office Omar Riaz Cheema, then SP CRO Umar Salamat and then SP Asad Sarfaraz Khan were all ignored.
CCPO Amin led these officers in the successful implementation of the pilot project. The DIG Operations was responsible for introducing the Human Resource Management Information System (HRIMS), including the transfer-posting module and biometric attendance module.
Dr Haider was also credited for the Complaints Management System and was first to define the operational workloads of police stations through Computerised Ops Rooms.
Tenant registration was the brainchild of SP Mustansir while the idea of Hotel Eye was suggested by SP Asad. SP Haroon used crime maps for the first time for deployment of police force and patrolling strategy and also developed the state-of-the-art Ops Room.
DIG Investigations Sultan along with SP Omar and Umar Salamat was responsible for establishing te Investigations Corridor and made the Police Record Management System functional.
SP Omar also played a role in the Automated Fingerprints Information System by digitalising and compiling fingerprints of criminals throughout Punjab. This helped to set up the first citizen profiling system, which is used for awarding police character certificates. He also came up with the idea of android-based app Investigation Toolkit.
Then SP CIA Umar Virk also helped in developing the fingerprints matching capability.
Crime Mapping was the brainchild of DIG Zulfiqar Hameed. He as the Sargodha RPO and Gujranwala RPO Muhammad Tahir were the first ones to computerise their police stations and adopting IT-based policing outside Lahore.
None of these officers were rewarded or appreciated for their efforts during the inauguration ceremony.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 13th, 2017.
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