Security officials gather at the site of the suicide bomb attack in Peshawar on Sunday. PHOTO: AFP
PESHAWAR: Keeping in view the spate of terrorist attacks with only 10 days left to for general polls besides the looming threats for 21 political leaders, establishment of Joint Crisis Management Units (JCMU) have been ordered across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).
The decision was taken during security coordination meeting in the provincial capital on Saturday.
“The JCMUs established at districts levels will serve as nerve centres for collecting intelligence reports, ensure security arrangements before and after election campaigns and at the same time generate coordinated response in case of any untoward incident,” read a communiqué between home ministry and police department.
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The communiqué read that not only the units at district levels, but sub-command posts of these units should be established at different parts of district in order to reduce the response time in case of emergency.
“JCMU must have representatives from local armed forces’ formation, police, levy, civil administration besides relief department [health, Rescue 1122],” it informed adding that all representatives must hold coordination meeting immediately and review the situation regularly.
The official communication between the home ministry and police department also read that politicians should be served security advisory before holding their corner meetings and that the advisory should be served on the politicians [under threat] in person besides the compliance thereof should be ensured.
The JCMU representatives have been told that it should be ensured that all politicians nominate one representative for security aspect of election campaign adding that such representatives should be in close liaison with local police, civil administration throughout the campaign coordinating security of the candidate and place of political gatherings.
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It also ordered that besides local police and other law enforcing agencies, politicians should also employee local representatives [of their own political party] so that the checking mechanism for entry and exit points of the political gathering and further enhanced.
It stated that security of the candidates and leaders under threat should be enhanced immediately including involving the politicians’ private guards allowing them with permit of carrying weapons of prohibited bores. Contact should be established with all prayer leaders and management of religious seminaries for keeping record of the visitors, it read adding that the civil administration should remain in close coordination with such institutions to monitor the situation in order to deny any space to the miscreants.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 15th, 2018.
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