Police complaint centre — a new initiative

LAHORE

A new initiative of Punjab Police is the establishment of an integrated Police Complaint Centre to reach out to the people and address their issues related to the performance of police.

This was stated by the DIG Operations Punjab Amir Zulfiqar Khan while talking to The News here on Friday.

He said a state-of-the-art system had been designed to redress the public grievances in an expeditious manner. The system is highly interactive and the complainant is kept in the loop until the disposal of the complaint. The complainant can view the progress of his complaint online and can send his feedback at any moment, online or through SMS.

He said the complaints were previously received by post or a person had to travel to Lahore to submit his complaint in person at the Inspector General of Police office. Earlier, the complaint system was handled separately by different officers at CPO.

He said the Inspector General of Police Punjab reorganised the distribution of CPO work and presently an officer of the rank of AIG Complaints deals with complaints from all the sources, like receipt of complaint through post, in-person, e-mail, SMS & telephone, directives from President, PM, Governor, CM, CS, Home Department, NRP/ Overseas Pakistanis Complaints etc.

The DIG said the new intervention aimed at receiving complaints through SMS and voice calls on a short code (8787). Moreover, complaints are also received online as well as through emails, he added.

He said a dedicated team of young IT professionals had been deputed to handle these complaints which were being marked to SDPOs/DPOs/RPOs/Additional IGPs on behalf of the IGP for action.

AS per SOP of Police Complaint Centre, the applications against non-registration of FIRs would be forwarded to the SDPOs concerned who would contact the complainant in next eight hours and final reply would be submitted to complaint centre by him within 48 hours after giving complaint a patient hearing in person.

Complaints regarding faulty investigations would be personally dealt with by SDPOs and the requests for change of investigation would be completed in respective boards within 15 days. The complaints against illegal detentions would be forwarded to RPO, DPO or SP  concerned who would send a fact finding report within 24 hours. In case of complaints regarding arrests of innocent persons in false FIRs or registration of such cases, the application would be forwarded to SDPOs who would personally verify and take action accordingly in 72 hours. 

The applications regarding corruption or delay by police officials in performing their legal duties would be forwarded to CCPO/CPOs/DPOs concerned who would get the matter inquired in a day and send a preliminary report and final report in one week. To ensure better service delivery, all replies received from respective offices would be verified by the staff at complaint centre by making a telephonic call to the complainants.