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| May 26, 2005 | Thursday | Rabi-us-Sani 17, 1426 |
Provincial police chiefs oppose changes in Police Order
ISLAMABAD, May 25: The police chiefs of the four provinces on Wednesday rejected proposed amendments to the Police Order-2002, expressing apprehensions that the amended law would make police accountable to bureaucracy instead of elected representatives.
During a meeting of the NA’s standing committee on interior, the officials demanded that District Public Safety Commissions (DPSCs) should not be merged with Police Compliant Authorities (PCAs) and District Nazims should not be the only authority to write the Annual Confidential Reports of their District Police Officers (DPOs).
Presided over by Sardar Talib Hassan Nakai, the committee recorded the statements of the provincial police officers (PPOs) Asad Jehangir (Sindh), Riffat Pasha (NWFP), Chaudhry Yaqoob (Balochistan) and Saadatullah Khan (Punjab) and Irfan Mehmood, the additional PPO (Punjab). They concurrently requested the committee to address their reservations on the proposed amendments.
With recording of the statements of PPOs, the committee completed a series of briefings on the Police Order (Amendment) Ordinance, 2004 from all the stakeholders.
Interestingly, a day before the meeting, provincial chief secretaries had asked the NA committee not to give importance to the viewpoint of the PPOs. However, the police high ups were of the view that the proposed amendments would not serve the purpose of dispensation of justice to common man.
They said District Nazims should not write ACRs of their DPOs because they have no mechanism to evaluate their performance. “Therefore the ACRs of DPOs should be written by the concerned DIGs. At the same time a District Nazim should also not be excluded from the process and he should be consulted to evaluate behaviour of DPOs with community,” they added.
The meeting was informed that 54 amendments had been proposed to the police order-2002 and most of them aimed at punitive action against the police officials involved in misbehave, irregularities and mal-practices.
The PPOs said that the Police Complain Authorities (PCAs) in all provinces were supervised by the home secretaries and with their merger with DPSCs, the powers to control police would shift from chief ministers to home secretaries.
Criticising bureaucratic hurdles created by provincial home departments in the working of police, the PPOs said home departments might try to fiddle with the operational, administrative and financial autonomy of the PPO.
They demanded that the PPOs should be given status of the provincial secretaries, as envisaged in the police order. They said that the PPOs should be answerable to chief secretaries or the chief ministers and not to home secretaries. Later the committee’s chairman informed journalists that he had formed a subcommittee comprising MNAs Nayyer Bukhari, Shahid Akram Bhinder, Zahid Hamid and he himself to prepare recommendations.
The sub-committee would start its meetings from June 2 to finalise recommendations. The chairman opined that Nazims should not be given powers to write their comments on ACRs of DPOs.
He also expressed reservations on a proposed amendment to pave way for inclusion of MNAs and MPAs in safety commissions. He said investigation wing of police, which was separated from the ‘watch and ward’ wing, should be brought under the direct control of SHO and DPO.
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