Sindh Home Minister Manzoor Wassan announced that 5,500 more people will be appointed to the police department and 200 police mobiles will be provided to help curb street crime in Karachi.
Wassan said in the last 15 days street crime in the city fell by 17 per cent. Over 70 encounters took place during the last 15 days in which five robbers were killed, four were wounded and a target killer was also caught.
The home minister also said that the policemen who take part in encounters with criminals will be given awards while the SHOs will be taken to task if the rate of street crime in their areas remains high. Curbing street crime is one of the top priorities of the city’s police, he added.
When asked about the murder investigation of Dr Saleem Kharral of Jinnah hospital, Wassan said that the investigation was under way. Out of the total 15 cases of kidnapping for ransom this year, around 10 have been solved, he added.
He said that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto increased the sense of deprivation in the people of Sindh and the behaviour of some forces with the president intensified this feeling. “The terrorists want to take advantage of Sindh’s sense of deprivation,” said Wassan, while replying to a question. “The series of blasts on the railway tracks on Saturday morning are the result of this deprivation.”
He said that in the last four years the Peoples Party-led government wasn’t given the opportunity to work to appease the people of Sindh. “But we tried to make amends by giving jobs to the people dismissed in 1997.”
However, the home minister was unable to come up with a satisfactory reply when he was asked how much time the government will take to begin talking to the nationalist leaders of Sindh, just like it was trying to reach out to the Baloch leaders. But, Wassan said, the government will not talk to anti-state elements.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 26th, 2012.
COMMENTS (4)
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A corrupt police force to be given 5500 more men to be corrupted. How much did these poor people pay to be made police officers? How will they earn that money back? We the citizens will pay dearly for this, that's how. Lack of police officers is not the problem here, lack of honest people is the cause of corruption.
We need more police and better paid and better respected police in Karachi.
Hurray for political parties quota system!
Aimless Politicians with no proper agenda. I am living in UAE and never seen lot many police on roads but they have proper electronic monitoring system with more stress on forensics and rapid response forces. With useless headcount of police, with no dependency on IT, Knowledge base, GPS, Forensic or other technologies, you can never expect peace in the country.
We need to fix this department on scientific basis by engaging qualified people who are having local or foreign degrees in security management. NADRA should play important part in automating FIR and other crime and investigation reports.
But I am sure that our ministries are being run by foolish people and nothing going to happened.