IGP moves to streamline plethora of apps
This is second incident of target killing in three days. PHOTO: REUTERS
Inspector General of Police (IGP) Inam Ghani has issued orders to officials of the department for seeking approval from his office before launching any new IT application.
According to sources, the decision has been taken to avoid replication and wastage of resources. There had also been instances when an app was launched multiple times by various police wings. Due to the popularity of such initiatives, a trend has been prevailing among the officers to launch an app without evaluating the feasibility.
Ghani sought the details of apps launched so far from all the police authorities, including the CCPO, RPOs, DPOs and Punjab Safe City Authority.
The data of the apps will be centralised and for launching any new application, a summary would have to be sent to the DIG information technology for approval.
Ghani said the decision had been taken for better resource management.
A few weeks back, Chief Minister Usman Buzdar had launched the Women Safety App. This was an old app on which the work had been going on since 2017. It was initially been conceived by the Chief Minister’s Special Monitoring Unit (SMU) headed by Salman Sufi when Shehbaz Sharif was the provincial chief executive.
Later on, the task was taken up by the Punjab Safe City Authority. It launched the app in February last year.
After one and a half years, it was re-launched by Chief Minister Punjab Buzdar on November 4.
A day later, the IGP’s office also issued a statement about the launch of the app while describing its specifications.
The new SSP Administration of Lahore, Usman Bajwa, also announced the launching of a non-emergency helpline.
He asserted while describing the motive behind the launch of the app that the earlier method of police dealing with complaints had become archaic.
However, the Complaint Centre 8787 was already in place at the IGP office for the same purpose. The department had invested much in it and the IGP office would centrally monitor it.
It was mandatory for a DSP rank officer to respond to complaints made at the cell. Successive IGPs had claimed improved performance of the centre.
The comments of Bajwa were found in contrast to the claims of the IGP. The official website of Punjab Police claimed tremendous performance of the 8787 complaints centre when it came to dealing with complaints against police of non-emergency category.
The nature of complaints entertained at the IGP Complaints Centre included non-registration of FIRs, faulty investigations, illegal detention, arrest of innocent persons, registration of false FIR, slackness in duty and demand of illegal gratification.
The IG office claimed that since its inauguration on January 1 2016 till September 15 this year, the centre had received 319,031 complaints and disposed of 309,719 of them. The centre asserted that 9,312 complaints were being processed.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 4th, 2020.