IGP says no place for highhandedness in Police dept

PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakht-unkhwa, Inspector General of Police Sanaullah Abbasi on Thursday vowed not to tolerate corruption and highhandedness in the Police Department.

He said this while speaking at a conference attended by the additional IGP headquarters, investigation, DIG headquarters and Internal Accountability and all Regional Police Officers via video link.

The participants of the conference reviewed the public complaint redress system, Police Access Service (PAS), established at the Central Police Office (CPO) and KP police Internal Accountability system.

The DIG Internal Accountability gave a detailed briefing to the IGP and said a citizen can register his/her complaint in PAS through various modes of commutation including SMS, online portal, email, telephone, fax, by post and in person.

Under the system, every complaint is entered into a centralized database of PAS and a unique code of complaint is sent to the complainant via SMS.

The system informs relevant officials about the registered complaint through SMS and they are bound to contact the complainant within 24 hours.

It was told that PAS is a computerized timeline based monitoring system that ensures resolution of the complaint in the stipulated time period.

The KP police chief was informed that access to the system is easy, quick and direct and due to the code, no complaint could go unattended and the complainant could get information till the redress of his/her registered complaint.

The PAS had been established in all district police offices in the province for the facilitation of the general public. It has been linked through an automatic system with the central system at the CPO.

The IGP was briefed that a total of 31,764 complaints were received, 30,100 complaints were addressed to the satisfaction of complaints, whereas 1,663 complaints are under process.

As many as 12,609 complaints were received through SMS, 2,522 were received online and the remaining registered through various modes of communication.

Likewise, 5,903 complaints were received for online registration of FIRs, 12,431 complaints were received against police, whereas 11984 complaints were against the public.

The IGP was informed that so far 3347 police personnel had been awarded punishment on public complaints. It was told that 355 police personnel had been awarded major punishment, including removal from service and 2,992 police personnel had been awarded minor punishments.

Addressing the conference, the KP police chief said that safeguarding human rights and timely redress of public complaints were topmost priorities of the police.

He directed relevant police officers to make a functional Public Safety Commission and Regional Complaints Authority at the earliest.

The IGP directed participants to strengthen the internal accountability system of police and ensure the provision of help to the needy people.