KP’s first model police station to be bulldozed

PESHAWAR: The first model police station of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gulbahar, is to be bulldozed in a few days after the building was declared one of the biggest encroachments in the provincial capital.
The Gulbahar Police Station on the Grand Trunk Road was declared Model Police Station in April last year. Two other police stations of Peshawar, ie Faqirabad and University Town, were also declared model police stations afterwards.
Recently, one each police station in Mardan, Charsadda, Swabi and Nowshera were declared model police stations after the foreign-funded project was extended there. However, the first-ever of those police stations is to be razed to ground during the massive anti-encroachment drive launched by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government.
“The Gulbahar Police Station has been declared an encroachment, which will be demolished soon to open the road. We are also going to remove sandbags and concrete blocks around the police stations. These will be either shifted inside the buildings or some other arrangements will be made so the flow of traffic on the roads outside the police stations is not hampered,” Deputy Commissioner Riaz Khan Mahsud told The News.
Police officials said alternate arrangements had been made to shift the Gulbahar Police Station. “The building is being partially demolished under the anti-encroachment drive. The government, however, has arranged an alternate place where the police station will be shifted,” personal staff officer to the inspector general of police (IGP), Dr Mustafa Tanveer, told The News.
After declaring it a Model Police Station, some infrastructural developments were made in Gulbahar, with renovation of the building, providing technology for investigation, installation of the closed circuit television cameras, setting up a reception as well as a female desk to receive women complainants in a friendly environment. The cops, however, were neither given relief by implementing the shift system, nor were they given other facilities.
Apart from the police station, the building hosts the offices of the superintendent of police (SP) city, assistant superintendent of police (ASP) Gulbahar as well as the jury room and offices of the Dispute Resolution Council.
Apart from Gulbahar, most of the police stations in the city have blocked the roads and streets outside the buildings as part of security arrangements because of precarious law and order situation over the past several years.
A massive anti-encroachment drive has recently been launched all over the city to open all the blocked roads for vehicular traffic as well as pedestrians. Some of the roads and narrow bazaars that were blocked by the shopkeepers and vendors for decades have recently been opened by demolishing the structures.
The district administration has given notices to owners of all those plazas that have constructed shops in their parking lots. Also, owners of all those plazas that have no parking lots have been directed to arrange for their parking as their vehicles will not be allowed on roads.
The traffic system in the provincial capital has collapsed not only because of the inadequate enforcement by the police but also due to the absence of traffic engineering system and negligence on part of the transport department and development authorities.
Traffic jams are the order of the day in most parts of the city since majority of the roads connecting Saddar, University Road or Hayatabad have been blocked due to security reasons for the last many years.