All police stations to follow SOPs

Modernisation initiative expanded sans additional expenses

LAHORE:

All the police stations of Punjab will now follow the SOPs introduced under the Special Initiative Police Stations (SIPS) project that don’t need additional expenses or drastic changes.

The SOPs are related to complaint management, registration of FIR, schedule of inquiries and investigations, investigation of offences, arrest of accused, police station management and front desk management.

The SIPS project was launched by the PTI government when Arif Nawaz was the IGP. Under the project, at least 50 police stations were to be upgraded.

The upgradation included provision of modern infrastructure, computerisation, installation of CCTV, division of police station into community and visitors area, operations wing, investigations wing, setting up of front desk, Gender-Based Violence Cell, victim support officer and duty officer.

The first police station developed under SIPS was inaugurated by Prime Minister Imran Khan. Punjab Police announced in May that the ongoing financial year would be observed as the year of police stations.

The number of police stations included in the SIPS scheme was raised from 50 to 400. The upgrade is planned in phases. During the current financial year, R300 million was allocated for the purpose, while the rest of the amount will be released next year.

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However, it may take several years to complete physical upgrade of over 700 police station across the province.

In the meantime,. IGP Rao Sardar Khan has asked the field officers to follow the SOPs that are implementable without additional cost through soft measures.

He has issued directions in this regard to all the additional IG of South Punjab, CCPO Lahore and all RPOs, CPOs and DPOs.

“The cost-free soft initiatives of the scheme shall be uniformly implemented in all police stations to improve their functioning,” the official asserted. Under the complaint management SOPs, the IGP has asked the officers to maintain record of the reason of every person coming to a police station, issuing an e-tag for every complaint, tagging every emergency helpline calls in a computerised system, following the prescribed timelines for disposal of complaints, provision of the name and contact number of the inquiry officer and availability of the list of the timelines to each complainant and checklists regarding the process to each inquiry officer.

The police chief asked the officers to ensure following timeline of registration and sending a message to the complainant about registration of the FIR with legal section of the offence and name of the investigation officer.

He also ordered posting of the schedule of inquiries and investigations at the reception of police station as well as on the website.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st, 2021.