Home dept budget up by 7.82% at Rs124.87b

Provincial government's focus remains on maintaining peace

KARACHI:

Sindh government has increased the budget of provincial home department including police and prisons by Rs5 billion for new financial year.

The Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah announced in his budget speech that the home department budget has been increased from Rs119.98 billion to Rs124.873 billion for new fiscal year.

The CM specially mentioned recent terrorist incidents occurred in Karachi, including suicide attack in Karachi University in which three Chinese nationals were killed.

The chief minister said that maintaining peace and order has always been the primary focus of the government.

According to him, the provincial government has made significant improvement the in intelligence-based surveillance while actively engaging all the law enforcement agencies. "We are trying our best to ensure that proactive measures are taken to counter and curb all sorts of terrorism," the chief minister said.

According to official documents of the Sindh budget 2022-23 an overall increase of 7.82 per cent has been made in the allocation of the provincial home department collectively for both, development and non-development, expenditures.

Like other departments, a huge amount of the budget of the Sindh Police is also spent on salaries.

According to the budget books around Rs94 billion will be utilised only on payment of salaries out of total annual budget of the Sindh Police worth Rs110 billion. Share of Karachi Police's salaries is over Rs47 billion.

Provincial government has allocated Rs5.64 billion for annual expenses of Inspector General Police, Sindh, in the new fiscal year. An allocation of Rs1.97 billion has been made for Additional IGP Karachi.

Similarly, Rs2.4 billion for DIG Traffic, Karachi, Rs818 million for SP Traffic, Karachi South, Rs477 million for SP Traffic Central, Rs477 million for SP Traffic East, and Rs393 million for SP Traffic West.

Provincial government has allocated meager funds for Public Safety and Police Complaints Commission in different districts in new financial year.

According to the budget books Rs4.5 million has been reserved for district commission, Badin, Rs4.2 million for Ghotki, Rs5.6 million for Hyderabad and Rs3.6 million for public safety commission, Jacobabad.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, June 15^th, 2022.