PESHAWAR: As the government is considering a number of reforms in the KP police including clipping powers of the top cop, the force has submitted performance report to the authorities claiming improvement in the overall affairs of the force as compared to the past.
The government has recently constituted a committee comprising a number of ministers and others concerned to propose reforms in the KP police. The process was accelerated following some incidents of police torture in lock-ups and other places.
The committee has been tasked to consider various ways of external and internal accountability of the force, clipping powers of the IGP and other officers, bringing Special Branch under the direct control of the chief minister through the Home Department and setting up a parallel inspectorate.
The bosses of the force, however, claim that the KP Police have been doing better as compared to the past years. An official said a report has been submitted to the government while highlighting the good work done in the recent months.
“In 2014, KP Police with support from PTI government embarked on a complete transformation journey through i) depoliticization and operational autonomy of the force; ii) improvement of service delivery to the public; iii) accountability to the public; iv) structural reforms through recruitment and creation of specialized units; v) capacity building; vi) enactment of new laws and vii) community engagement,” said the report submitted to the government.
“Despite the Covid-19 challenges, KP Police introduced new initiatives that include the establishment of independent committees for postings and transfers of DPOs, the delegation of DSPs postings to local CCPO/RPOs, financial autonomy of SHOs and CIOs (declared as DDOs), technological modernization of police department through initiation of e-ticketing, e-FIRs and the roving eyes across the province. A high-tech command and control centre (CCU) for live monitoring through drones and surveillance vehicles has also been established,” stated the report.
The KP Police absorbed about 24,633 Levies and Khasaddars during 2020. With the help of the Army and LEAs, a Covid compliant training plan for the training of Levies and Khassaddars has been developed such that so far 10,000 personnel have been trained while all the rest are to be trained by the first quarter of 2022. A new training school has also been established at Shahkas in Khyber district for the Basic Recruit School.
Owing to the KP Police’s prime focus on crimes against women, children and other vulnerable groups - in May 2020, the first-ever Women Reporting Center (WRC) was established in Kurram district along with 15 additional policewomen being hired to facilitate the womenfolk.
“A glance at the crime comparative figures for first three months of 2021 compared to 2020 reflects a downward shift in crime categories of rape by 17%, missing persons by 77%, assault on police by 20%, child lifting by 9%, vehicle theft by 40% and vehicle snatching by 33%. A plunge of 25% has been recorded in terrorism and militancy-related crime for the first 3 months of 2021 versus the same period of last year. An increase of 10% was recorded in the murder but overall, the crimes against persons went down by 1.2% during the same period. Burglary increased by 17% in the same period. While 5 and 1 additional incidents of dacoity and robbery with murder were reported in 2021 versus 2020,” claimed the report.
The report added that in the newly merged districts (NMDs), a total of 26 new police stations have been created within existing resources recently, taking the total number to 51. An amount of Rs7 billion has been allocated for the construction of 25 police stations, 7 Special Branch offices and 7 CTD offices by the Frontier Works Organization (FWO), it added.
In 2020, Special Branch and Counter-Terrorism Department units have been established in NMDs while 140 policemen have been trained on-job under the Special Branch. In the CTD for NMDs, 715 positions have been made as well as DDOs/Cost Centers have been created. A budget of Rs130 million has been allocated for the construction of CTD police stations and police posts. Since the war on terror, the KP Police force has increased by 300% (from 31,482 to 119,045). “During this period, almost 180-degree turn took place in the orientation of KP Police’s role from being on the frontline against the war on terror to conventional policing and lastly to Covid-19 driven policing,” stated the report.
