Revamping culture: Ground-breaking initiative restoring public confidence in police

Citizens’ complaints being quickly redressed by administration.

LAHORE: City police’s decision to deploy two administration officials each at police stations across Lahore has gone a long way to revamp organisational culture, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Over a hundred officials with undergraduate degrees had been trained at police lines under the initiative. Muhammad Idrees, a trader, told The Express Tribune that he had filed a complaint at Masti Gate police station after a labourer ran off with garments worth Rs46,000 that he had bought after securing a loan. He said Adeel, one of the administration officials at the police station, spoke with him politely, offered him refreshments and took immediate action on his complaint. Idrees said the absconding worker had been nabbed in less than two hours and his goods were recovered. He said the presence of administration officials at police stations was a testament to the department’s changing culture. Idrees said he felt they were sensitised to the plight of the underprivileged.

Ali Reza, a resident of EME Society, said he had been trying to register an FIR at the local police station after his motorcycle was stolen for a long time in vain. He said the mohrrar (clerk) at the police station had admonished him for trying to get an FIR registered in this regard. Reza said an FIR had been registered after the placement of an administration official at the police station. He said a copy of the FIR had been delivered at his doorstep and his motorcycle had been recovered on Friday in a raid. Reza said the initiative would help restore citizens’ confidence in the department.



A mohrrar told The Express Tribune that his workload had increased significantly after the placement of administration officials at police stations. The mohrrar said the administration officials complained to senior police officials directly in the event of a delay in the registration of an FIR.

CCPO Amin Wains told The Express Tribune that all administration officials would be given laptops by January 12 to record citizen’s grievances. He said they had been given SIMs to enable them to contact senior police officials directly. Wains said he, Operations DIG Haider Ashraf and divisional SPs would monitor evening deliberations at police stations by CCTV cameras that would be installed at police stations on January 10. He said the police stations would also be equipped with a video-link facility on January 31 to enable them to effectively communicate with SHOs and administration officials deployed there.

Wains said administration officials had been deployed at police stations to ensure that citizen’s grievances were quickly redressed. He said the initiative had been taken after three major problems at police stations were identified. These were lack of public access to SHOs, lack of decision-making and the need to ensure that citizen’s grievances were quickly redressed.

The CCPO said the officials had been directed to take firm decisions to redress peoples’ grievances. He said they had been instructed to communicate with citizens in vernacular and foster an environment conducive to resolving their problems. Wains said the initiative was solely focussed on facilitating the people who constituted the important stakeholder for the department.

Wains said CIA SP Umer Virk had been tasked with monitoring their performance daily.
Virk told The Express Tribune that he had sent plain-clothed policemen disguised as complainants to review their conduct and performance.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 28^th, 2014.