Police demand recognition as frontline soldiers in fight against virus

LAHORE:Punjab Police senior officers have termed the fight against Covid-19 Guerilla War due to its high risk and demanded acknowledgement of their role in the fight as frontline soldiers.

Talking to The News regarding role of policemen in fight against the pandemic, they said the visible enemy even larger in strength was less dangerous than the coveted enemy. The frightening element of suicide attacks has always been higher as compared to common attacks. The war on Covid-19 is actually being fought in streets, towns and hospitals, one of the officers said.

The role of doctors and paramedical staff in this fight is being acknowledged and surely, there is no second opinion that our doctors and paramedical staff deserve praise for standing against the virus. But in this fight, the services of police department are being ignored despite the fact that they are fighting on the front line which deserves the most applause.

DIG Operations Suhail Sukhera said Punjab Police had set an example by playing an unprecedented role in fighting against Corona. "If we compare the circumstances, cops are in very critical situation as compared with doctors. It is the job of doctors to treat the patients and fight the virus. Likewise, they also come into the field equipped with all precautionary measures. They know that rather patient is confirmed or suspected, they face the patients after adopting all safety measures. Many doctors are treating the patients via online service or they are checking their patients even behind a glass wall. All these safety measures are necessary and such steps must be acknowledged. But police officials are performing their duties on pickets, quarantine centres, hospitals and other important places during the lockdown. They face every kind of person while enforcing SOPs.

The patient who comes to doctor knows either he is a suspected or confirmed case of corona but when a police official interacts with any person, neither the cop nor the person knows whether he is affected or not. Most of the citizens are victims of this self-confidence and do not follow the SOPs. For police, this war is synonymous to guerilla war, claimed the DIG.

Despite all this, these police officials are performing their duties. Their spirit and patriotism is worth seeing that corona affected officials are on their duties on the very next day after their recovery. We should also observe that additional police is deputed on corona duties.

Strength of police is already less for controlling crime but now a huge number of them is offering Corona duties and also controlling crime. The DIG said police are performing their duties on both fronts under the leadership of IG Punjab Shoaib Dastgir who is standing with his force on every front and sharing his wide experiences to his force in the last part of his service bravely by which morale of Police force is getting high. He said that IG being 59-year-old donated his blood in a police camp established for thalassaemia affected children and police force also donated blood in this regard. In addition to it, in the wake of corona virus and lockdown issue in country, credit of establishment of police fund meant for daily wagers also goes to him. He said owing to his command, police force proved its work and abilities on corona front and showed more performance with respect to crime control in 2020 compared with previous year.

If we shortly observe the record during the current year, complaints registered on IGP complaint cell 8787, ratio of pending complaints has been reduced to 45 percent as compared with the previous year and the people’s issues are getting resolved speedily whereas ratio of engagement of people is 34 percent more than the previous year which reveals that trust of people in 8787 complaint cell is improving.

On the other side, according to reports of different agencies and law enforcement departments in Punjab, among 336 gambling houses, actions have been taken against 311 gambling spots whereas the owners of the remaining gambling houses fled away. Similarly, 494 drug pushers have been identified across the province among them 419 have been arrested and actions are underway against rest of them. IG Punjab also prepared a list of top 10 criminals and took action against them in all districts across the province, by which among 373 criminals, 300 top criminals have been arrested.

Likewise, in 2019, 1,300 gangs of dacoits had been arrested whereas during the current year, around 1,550 gangs have been rounded up and more than 450 cases registered and legal actions taken against land mafia. This year, Punjab Police handed over more than Rs5.853 billion cash to real owners after recovering from dacoits. Moreover, a full-fledged action had been taken against incidents of kidnapping for ransom which is quite visible for the fact that during 2019 in Punjab, 29 cases of kidnapping for ransom had been registered whereas in year 2020, 15 cases had been registered and all criminals of these cases had been traced. The incidents of kidnapping for ransom declined to 58 percent during current year.

The DIG further said that if we do not acknowledge the frontline soldiers today history will recall us as national criminals.