PESHAWAR, June 11: The NWFP government’s campaign against drug addicts may prove a futile exercise as the police have failed to halt the availability of narcotics on city streets.
Despite the cooperation extended by the city police to the anti-drug campaign, a gathering of five to six heroin addicts in many city areas exposes the commitments of the law-enforcement agencies to their work.
The drug addicts daily sit in groups around the green belt on GT Road around general bus stand, many streets in Hashtnagri area, Karkhano bazaar and several other localities where they puff heroin in front of the general public.
It is observed that in all the gathering of the addicts, one would be a traffickers, who daily provide them heroin in the guise of an addict. But the police despite having the knowledge never arrested those drug traffickers.
When Chief Minister Akram Durrani asked one of the addicts at the detoxification centre at the inaugural ceremony as to where he got their heroin supplies, he said: “From a place in front of Gulbahar and Faqirabad police station.”
His comments embarrassed the former IGP Saeed Khan and chief of City Capital Police Tanvir-ul-Haq Sipra, who were present on the occasion.
Since the beginning of the campaign against drug addicts on May 24, about 50 patients have been admitted to the temporary detoxification centre at Blinds Institute in Peshawar.
“We have sent 20 heroin patients to the Rehabilitation Centre in Kohat as their detoxification periods have been successfully completed,” said Abid Nazir, an official of the centre.
The detoxification centre had handed over 24 heroin patients to the local NGOs for their detoxification, Mr Abid said. “We also want active participation of the NGOs in the campaign,” he added.
Still there were 16 heroin patients at the centre who would be sent to rehabilitation centres in Swat or Dera Ismail Khan, Mr Abid maintained.
He said the officials of Social Welfare Department went to many streets in the city and those who showed their willingness to be cured were admitted to the detoxification centre.
Only in the first week of the anti-drug campaign, the police showed efficiency and sent heroin patients to the centre, but since then they did not participate in the activity, he lamented.
