KARACHI: Deployment of police for UN mission lapsed twice
By S. Raza Hassan
KARACHI, Nov 13: Pakistan’s share of allocated seats of police personnel for deployment on the United Nations peace keeping missions lapsed twice, in July and October, causing considerable loss to the national exchequer in terms of foreign exchange earnings.
The seats lapsed primarily due to the fact that some officials of the interior ministry kept sitting on the correspondence for their petty interests instead of passing on timely information to the candidates, claimed several disgruntled candidates.
The latest mission to Ivory Coast lapsed on Oct 28 having a total of 25 seats throughout the country and nine belonging to Sindh. Earlier in July 2005, 76 seats for Kosovo also lapsed in a similar manner. The Ivory Coast mission offered emoluments up to US$135 per day and Kosovo had US$95 per day.
A candidate said that if a contingent had been sent to
Ivory Coast mission, its replacement would also have been made from Pakistan as per the rules.
Documents showed that SI Imran Rashid was caught cheating in UN examination conducted by the UN in October 2003. However, the merit list issued by the interior ministry on Sept 14, 2005 carried the sub-inspector’s name among top 20 candidates.
On Nov 8, 2005, the interior ministry issued a letter to the four provincial police officers in connection with the nomination of the police officers for deployment to the UN mission in Ivory Coast.
The letter stated that the nine candidates from Sindh would not proceed to the mission area since the UN authorities had already deployed the required number of individuals from other police contributing countries.
According to the letter, the competent authority decided that the personnel already nominated in the merit list, compiled after the UN-SAT test conducted in 2003, would have to appear again in the forthcoming UN-SAT test.
A UN team is due in Islamabad on Nov 21 to conduct tests for the selection of candidates for new mission in the coming years.
The lapsing practice is not new, Pakistan’s share of allocated seats of the police personnel for deployment on the United Nations peacekeeping missions also lapsed twice in December and March last year.
In December 2004, the United Nations Selection Assistance Team (UN-SAT) inducted a German contingent after Pakistani Interior Ministry failed to dispatch a selected batch of police personnel.
Pakistan lost its contingent twice, owing to the lethargy shown by some officials of the interior ministry, alleged several disgruntled police officials.
According to the UN-SAT predeployment assessment procedures, the term of validity of the UN-SAT assessments would be effective for 18 months from the date of completion of the assessment.
Erratic policies based on the personal gains likings and dislikings have resulted in the reduction of seats, police officials blamed.
Initially, there were 700 plus seats allocated when the missions were introduced in 1991-92. Now, the number has been reduced to almost 10 per cent (i.e. 76 seats) due to the self-construed policies of the interior ministry, police officials claimed.
A senior police official was of the opinion that going to the UN peacekeeping mission was once considered a fair and transparent process. However, some lower staff of the ministry started exploiting the situation to their means over the years.
