CM wants ‘decisive’ action against street crimes

Says yearly statistics show there has not
been much progress in making streets safe

The Sindh chief minister directed the police department on Friday to launch a “decisive and result-oriented” crackdown on street criminals and their abettors.

Presiding over a meeting, Murad Ali Shah said the street crime figures he was presented with at the cabinet meeting a day earlier were extremely disturbing. “This is why I have convened a follow-up meeting to review the rate of street crimes and devise a pragmatic strategy to end this menace,” he added.

Additional IG Karachi Mushtaq Maher, while presenting comparative figures of street crime collected by the CPLC, said in the year 2015, 92 four-wheelers were stolen in 2015 and the figure came down to 73 in 2016.

In 2015, 762 motorcycles were snatched and the figure dropped slightly to 734 next year.

In 2015, 21,198 mobile phones were snatched and 20,442 stolen. In 2016, 34,137 mobile phones were either snatched or stolen.

The official said in 2016, 1,548 street criminals were arrested. Of them, 14 were convicted and three acquitted. Presently, 1,082 are in jail and 449 are out on bail.

The chief minister said the figures suggested that street crimes continued to persist in the city and the complaints of the citizens were genuine.

IGP AD Khowaja said street crimes and drug addiction were linked and criminals mostly were from slum areas.

He said the sanctioned strength of the Karachi police was 39,589 against which 27,389 were working – a shortfall of 12,200 cops.

It was pointed out that the population of New Delhi was 16 million and it had a force of 84,536 policemen which showed a ratio of one cop for 198 people. New York has a population of 8.5 million and 49,526-storng police force which meant there was a ratio of 1:172.

Lahore has a population of 10.35 million with a police force of 27,146 which showed a ratio of 1:381. However, Karachi, which has a population of 22 million, only had 27,389 cops and the ratio is 1:803. The chief minister said the police and population ratio was “not bad” in the city and there may be some administrative issues that needed to be addressed properly. The chief minister also allowed the IGP to fill the vacant posts on merit.

Shah directed the IGP to expedite the process of installing CCTV cameras in the city and order extensive patrolling in the street-crime affected areas.

The CM also ordered close coordination between the various wings of police and start a targeted operation against street criminals. “The operation must be properly worked out, focused and in the operation, drug and land mafias should also be eliminated,” he said.

Chief secretary Rizwan Memon, additional IG CTD Sanaullah Abbasi, principal secretary to the CM Naveed Kamran Baloch, home secretary Shakeel Mangnijo, Karachi commissioner Aijaz Ali Khan, the CPLC chief  and DIG Traffic Asif Aijaz Shaikh were also present at the meeting.