Reforms in Punjab police in limbo

ISLAMABAD: No meaningful work on reforms in Punjab police that Imran Khan has repeatedly talked about before and after becoming the prime minister is in sight in near future as the government is taking its time to appoint a new chairman of the committee that was rendered headless after Nasir Durrani’s resignation two weeks back.

“I think shortlisting is being done to pick the new chairman of the Punjab Committee on Police Reforms and Implementation,” Iftikhar Durrani, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Media, told The News.

He said Shehzad Arbab, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Establishment, is doing the shortlisting. He did not specify any timeline when this process will be completed. The adviser neither attended calls to his mobile phone nor did he respond to a text message.

Durrani said it was the prime minister’s priority to introduce reforms in the Punjab

police and thought that CBMs (confidence building measures) were needed in the first instance.

He said the police training, orientation and culture have to be changed and the force will have to be equipped with hi-tech to meet the new challenges.

The Nasir Durrani-led committee was just kick-starting its work when it became headless after its chief stepped down in protest against the removal of Punjab Inspector General of Police Muhammad Tahir. As a result, no worthwhile work has even been started in the first nine weeks of the incumbent government.

The prime minister had selected low profile Nasir Durrani after seeing his performance in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) during the tenure of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government.

Imran Khan during his protest campaigns prior to assuming the office of the prime minister had attacked for umpteen times the then Punjab government accusing it of politicising the police and stuffing it with its cronies. He has been vowing to cleanse the police and make it a modern force. However, any progress to translate his pledge into reality is yet to be made.

When Nasir Durrani was working as the committee chairman, he had set up its office in the GOR-I Lahore, which was immediately shut down after his dissociation with the body.