Police’s bid for transparency fails

LAHORE:

Punjab Police have decided to conduct written tests for recruitment of constables through the department itself.

The police had taken the decision in light of corrupt practices and irregularities conducted by private companies, an official told The Express Tribune.

For the last couple of years, the Punjab Police had been engaging independent companies for conducting written tests for recruitment of constables to maintain transparency and impartiality.

However, the move reportedly backfired, and Punjab Police have now decided to once again shoulder the responsibility themselves.

The independent firms that had been tasked with the responsibility of exercising impartiality and transparency ironically betrayed the trust bestowed on them by one of the highly important institutions of the province.

The corrupt practices these companies indulged in were exposed. Only last year, it was detected in Lahore and some districts of Punjab that the test papers were leaked beforehand to those candidates who had been willing to pay for them.

Not only that but it was also found that in some cases results had been tampered with.

In March last year in a Punjab Police recruitment scam in the district of Chiniot, the Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE), Punjab, had arrested one person who had been the operations manager of one of the companies the police department had hired for conducting the tests.

The matter of tampering with in the recruitment test for the posts of constables, lady constables, drivers and computer operators was referred to Punjab ACE on the directions of a court by Chiniot police after registering a case against four candidates who had allegedly passed the recruitment test through fraudulent means.

During the investigations, the accused had confessed that they had charged from Rs300,00 to Rs500,000 against one vacancy from over 50 students in Chiniot alone. He had told the investigators that a government employee from the lower cadre acted as his front man.

He said that the modus operandi they used was to ask the candidates who had bribed them to leave their answer sheets blank and they would get it filled after two days with the correct answers.

Just a few days before the above case, a scandal involving changing of sheets before their submission was reported. The malpractice was indulged in during the tests for recruitment to some posts in Lahore police department. An FIR was registered against at least 274 candidates besides the CEO of a courier service and other staff for changing examination papers.

In January 2021, another FIR was registered in Qila Gujjar Singh Police Lines Police Station against at least six people on charges of forging the results of exams conducted for recruitment to the police department.

The foul play was detected when four candidates who had cleared their written tests appeared before the interview panel and found to be behaving abnormally.

Their behaviour had alarmed the panelists who decided to probe the tricksters’ credentials and found that they had secured very low marks in their intermediate and matriculation exams.

When the panelists decided to do some more digging, it transpired that the results for the departmental exams had been rigged.

The marks had been increased from 55 per cent to 75 per cent.

Before the Punjab Police last engaged a private company in its recruitment process, a paper leak scandal emerged.

Citing the examples of foul play, the top brass of the Punjab Police has now decided that the department itself will conduct the written tests.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2022.