PA body irked over prosecutors not turning up at ATCs

Karachi

The provincial assembly’s standing committee on home expressed on Wednesday its dissatisfaction over the performance of the prosecution department noting that prosecutors were appearing in courts despite the expenditure of Rs300 million on the department from the provincial exchequer.

The standing committee met with Pakistan People’s Party MPA Syed Awais Qadir Shah in chair to consider the proposals of the Sindh police department and the home department for the provincial government’s budget for the financial year 2016-17.

Besides the members of the standing committee, the meeting was attended by IGP AD Khowaja, special home secretary Riaz Soomro and other senior police and home department officials.

The committee members expressed their annoyance over the secretaries of the finance and services departments not attending the meeting.

They also expressed their concern over the number of pending cases in the anti-terrorism courts of the province despite a phenomenal spending of Rs300 million on the prosecution department.

The chairman of the committee asked the home department officials as to why prosecutors were appearing in courts as because of this reason, several cases of terrorism and other heinous crime were pending.

The special home secretary conceded that the unavailability of prosecutors was delaying the disposal of the cases at anti-terrorism courts.

He informed the committee that the Sindh chief minister had signed the summary for hiring 200 prosecutors and Sindh Public Commission would recruit them.

The committee also expressed its resentment over the delay in the completion of he computerised arms licences project despite the passage of three years.

The secretary responded that Sindh was ahead of other provinces in terms of the computerisation of arms licences and the project was being carried out with the assistance of the National Database and Registration Authority.

He said the verification of 0.7 million arms licences was an impossible task and the provincial government had been recommended to rescind these licences.

So far, the computerisation of only 50,000 licences had been carried out.

The IGP said because of the delay in the issuance of computerised arms licences, many had adopted the practice of buying and selling weapons on old, manual licences, especially in other provinces which were then brought to Sindh.

He suggested that arms dealers should be told to avoid selling weapons on to those possessing old licences.

He also complained because of no boundary walls around police headquarters and training centres, they were vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

The expenses of shipping containers placed around such installations as security barriers were borne by the home department, not police.

The standing committee expressed its concerns over the delay in construction of boundary walls around jails, police headquarters, and training centres.

The committee also directed the authorities concerned to construct new prison facilities away from the populated areas.

The standing committee members were informed that during the financial year 2015-16, the budget of the provincial police force was Rs61.5 billion as salaries accounted for 84 percent of this budget, and four percent reserved each for fuel expenses, procurement of weapons, purchase of new vehicles, and repair and maintenance of buildings.

The officials concerned said an electronic surveillance system for Karachi and other projects of the information technology department were not functioning properly because there were not enough funds.

They said special budgetary allocations were required for signing contracts with private sector firms for the repair and maintenance of cameras being used for surveillance in the city.

It was also disclosed on the occasion that 1,100 CCTV cameras installed at 200 locations of the city were either not functioning properly or missing. Around 125 CCTV cameras were stolen while 975 cameras malfunctioned. The electronic surveillance system was rendered useless because of the police IT department’s negligence. 

A decision has been made to install eight megapixels cameras to replace the two megapixels ones for better picture quality.

It was also informed that jammers being used to block cellular phone signals were not being working properly. Jammers were not functioning at the time when Justice Maqbool Baqir was attackd in 2013.

A member of standing committee, Imtiaz Shaikh of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional, said police stations in the province set up in school buildings should be shifted elsewhere.

It was also informed on the occasion that 80 percent of police stations in the province were without public help desks.