KP Police short of 53 officers in senior grades

Demands by the province ignored continuously;
force is short of four Additional IGs, 10 DIGs, 18 SSPs, 21 SPs

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police is currently short of 53 officers in senior grades and this has compelled the authorities to give acting charge to a large number of juniors, a source told The News.

The situation can be judged from the fact that for the senior most positions of additional inspectors general (Ad IG), only a single grade-21 officer has posted as the rest of the positions have been filled by giving the charge to grade-20 cops.

The source said the federal government was approached on a number of occasions for the services of senior police officers to post them on important positions, but the request is still pending.

The KP Police several times demanded the “Hard Area” status for the province already given to Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan, but this too wasn’t heeded by the Centre. This is despite the fact that the law and order situation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remained the worst compared to other provinces during the last many years.

“There are five sanctioned positions of the Ad IGs in grade-21 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police while the province has a single officer in the senior grade retiring next month,” the source said. It added that four positions of grade-21 are currently occupied by grade-20 officers due to shortage of senior cops.

The source added that there are 18 positions of deputy inspectors general (DIG) in grade-20 in the KP Police. “Only eight grade-20 officers are available in the province for posting against the sanctioned positions of DIGs. The number of sanctioned posts of assistant inspector general and senior superintendent of police in grade-19 is 35 while the available officers in this grade are 17 only,” the source added.

There are a total of 78 vacancies for grade-18 superintendents of police. The KP Police currently has 57 officers in this grade with a shortage of 21. The same is the case in the lower grades, forcing the authorities to post junior officers against the senior positions that sometimes affect the performance.

“The KP Police had repeatedly asked for posting of senior officers to the province to command its capacity building initiative; however, the deficiency has not been met for unknown reasons. This crucial deficiency makes the war against terrorism more difficult for KP Police much to the disadvantage of the citizens of this province,” an official told The News.

The official said some of the grade-20 and grade-19 officers are likely to be promoted to the next grade in a couple of months. However, the issue of shortage of officers in senior grades will still continue.

The province is probably the only one where many junior officers were posted against senior positions for several years. A source said that many officers who had served as DIGs on acting charge basis or on shoulder promotion for years in KP were posted as AIGs or even SSPs in other provinces since they were still in grade-19. This caused embarrassment to these cops.