Out-of-turn-promotions: 180 more police officers leave charge on Wednesday

70 DSP posts are now vacant, promotion committee to meet this week to decide

KARACHI: After 4,000 demotions on Monday, around 180 more police officers were demoted and made to leave charge on Wednesday.

All the police officers were deputy superintendents of police (DSPs), and 32 of them were from Karachi.

Shahid Hayat, the DIG for Establishment in Sindh, confirmed the demotion orders and said that they were issued on the directives of the Supreme Court. Hayat said that the departmental promotion committee might meet later in the week to decide to fill 70 posts for DSPs which have fallen vacant. “When people will be promoted on merit then the police force will also work on merit,” he said. “It will also help boost morale.”

However, the orders caused panic in the ranks. Many of the demoted officers are not ready to work, which subsequently affects the force’s performance. There is also a threat of the police officers dividing into two camps and clashing - the demoted officers and the ones who will be promoted. The demotion report was submitted to the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Enter Waheeda Shah

The demoted DSPs think that they are being punished for someone else’s nepotism. They believe that all of them were demoted because of the two DSPs who were present with Waheeda Shah when she slapped the polling staff.

The technicalities

The officers were promoted to the next rank under Article 236 on own-pay scale (OPS). This means that although the officer is promoted, he retains the pay and allowances of the old rank. “We have left our charge. But it remains to be seen if deserving police officers are promoted,” said ex-DSP Nasir Bhukhari, who was promoted after serving 17 years as an inspector. “It’s only a matter of a few days. We will see if the new officers are more deserving than us.”

Demoting terrorism experts?

Meanwhile, there were also reports of demotions of 74 others, including Karachi’s former DIG, Farooq Amin, SSP Fayyaz Khan, SSP Farooq Awan, SSP Raja Omar Khattab, SSP Chaudhry Aslam Khan, SSP Rao Anwar, SP Mazhar Mashwani, SP Khurram Waris and SP Waqar Malhan.

These men are believed to be anti-terrorism experts and have dealt with several high-profile cases, including that of Daniel Pearl. Many of them have also survived terrorist attacks.

But the officers refuted the rumours and said that the present orders of the Supreme Court had no effect on them. “We were promoted under Section 9A’s rule 8B,” said SSP Farooq Awan. “Our dispute was with Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) which we won in the high court.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2012.