KP police facing shortage of officers

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police are short of officers in senior grades on the one hand while seasoned cops have been removed on the other recently and no replacement has been ordered so far.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police high-ups had time and again written to the federal government for transferring seasoned cops to the province to overcome the shortage of officers in senior grades, especially after seven more districts of erstwhile Fata have been merged into KP. A letter was sent only a couple of months back to transfer more officers for posting to important positions in senior grades. Two senior officers, deputy inspector general Telecommunication and DIG Hazara were removed last week and no ones transferred to replace them. The charge was given to other officers as an additional responsibility. A source said that KP Police authorities were considering officers from the Central Police Office and other wings for posting as RPOs, DIGs and Ad IGs in different wings on the basis of their performance as well as reports about their integrity and competence to command the respective forces well. Though some of the officers also reported to KP, many cops of the province managed to get transferred out of the KP last year, adding to the acute shortage of officers from grade-18 to grade-21. There is currently one police officer in grade-21 posted as additional inspector general while the rest are grade-20 officers working on senior positions. A senior cop of the province posted at the Central Police Office is also going to retire in a couple of weeks. The authorities approached the federal government through the provincial authorities several times for posting of senior officers in KP but the requests went unheeded.

The province had even demanded ‘hard area’ status like that of Balochistan after terrorist activities were at its peak in KP to get more seasoned officers posted in the province. However, the shortage of officers was always ignored. In a letter in November last year, the KP Police had informed the Home Department and the Establishment Division in Islamabad that there were a total of 98 sanctioned positions of Police Service of Pakistan (PSPs) in grade-19 and grade-18 in the province. However, the letter added, the number of PSPs posted in these grades was only 51.