National plan in action

The government appears to be moving on with the National Action Plan agreed on early this year after the massacre at the Army Public School in Peshawar. The Punjab government has decided to cancel the licences of over a hundred private security agencies which had failed to obtain clearance from the Special Branch. Show-cause notices have meanwhile been issued to 40 other agencies. While 387 private security agencies had previously been operating in the province, the cancellation of licences now means there are 284 agencies still operating. The size of the agencies and the number of personnel they employ varies. Most of the agencies are being run by retired officials connected to the military establishment. They are hired by banks, schools, private individuals and all kinds of businesses. At the end of July this year Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told parliament that many of the agencies did not have properly trained staff and some of the people hired by them were not even able to use firearms safely.
There are also other issues related to background checks of the guards. Some have been found to be linked to criminal gangs or have very poor records of service in government-run security departments. Because of this these agencies – and their personnel – essentially pose a threat to ordinary people. There have been incidents in which innocent persons have been shot at for no good reason. In other cases security guards have been used in personal enmities even by teenagers. The interior minister had said that the process of issuing licences to security agencies needs to be much more carefully monitored. He has also emphasised that no licences would be given to agencies run by foreigners. Certainly we need far more control on these agencies and we need to regulate how they function. There is too much freedom for persons hired as guards to carry and use weapons. This simply adds to the large number of arms already present in our society. Pakistan is already rated as one of the countries with the largest number of guns in private hands. There is also the issue of how many of the guns maintained by the private security agencies are properly licensed. It is good to see the government move ahead with implementing the National Action Plan. While doing so it also needs to keep in mind that security is a key responsibility of the state. The perception among people that the state is unable to keep them safe is one of the reasons why security agencies have mushroomed.