Review of proposed reforms for police service groups urged

A recent meeting of the executive committee of the Association of Former Inspectors General of Police (AFIGP) has proposed revisiting the reforms proposed for the different police service groups.

The meeting was attended by AFIGP President Iftikhar Rasheed, Vice-President Shahid Nadeem Balouch, General Secretary Kamal Uddin Tipu, and executive members Afzal Ali Shigri, Dr Muhammad Shoaib Suddle, Saeed Khan and Saud Gohar. In the resolution they passed on the occasion, they urged the task force on civil service reforms and government restructuring to revisit the proposed reforms relating to cluster/streaming of different service groups, including the Police Service of Pakistan.

In a meeting this March the task force chairman had responded to some of the AFIGP’s concerns regarding the proposal for cluster/streaming, as this would marginalise and alienate other services, including the PSP, from the mainstream and also adversely impact the interests of the federation. The task force chairman assured the AFIGP that the proposed reforms were based on consultation with all the provincial IGPs, the National Police Bureau, the National Police Academy and senior police officers.

But their feedback indicates that since the discussion was general in nature, there was no concrete outcome of the consultation and the key concerns remained unresolved. The PSP and other federal services are not represented on the task force. The recommendations are neither fully comprehended nor generally supported.

The AFIGP’s principal concern was that the proposed reforms would not only confine and stifle the PSP and most of the federal services but, for all intents and purposes, mean segregation into compartments instead of integration of all the services, leading to the creation of a monolith elite service.