|
|
|
| November 06, 2006 | Monday | Shawwal 13, 1427 |
Scrutiny of security agencies a tall order
LAHORE, Nov 5: The police in city and elsewhere in Punjab on Sunday began scrutiny of private security agencies on the orders of Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi.
However, the scrutiny of the agencies as part of amending laws to govern their rules is likely to pose a challenge as most of these business concerns are being run by former servicemen, especially from the army.
The Punjab government has for around a week been working on a plan to make new laws and amend the existing rules governing the agencies. The amendments have been sought in view of the increasing number of crime incidents involving the private security guards.
On directions from the government, city police chief Khwaja Khalid Farooq has asked operations police chief Amir Zulfiqar Khan to start scrutiny of the agencies. The operations chief is working to make the agencies bound to furnish sureties and taking responsibility of their personnel indulging in crimes. The same practice is being done in other parts of the province.
Official sources say the scrutiny process is going to be a hard task for the police as they believe that the owners of most of these agencies are usually well-connected people who can easily evade checks from the police or any other government department.
“When a police official will visit the owner of any agency who happens to be a retired army officer, he will not be able to seek submission of sureties because of the latter’s influence,” a senior bureaucrat commented.
However, he affirmed that the scrutiny process would be completed without any discrimination. “We will do it purely on merit,” he told Dawn. He said he had set up three teams, headed by the SPs of security, mobile and headquarters, who had been tasked to complete the scrutiny by Wednesday and furnish him with an exhaustive report.
“I assure you that the licences of the agencies not following the rules and regulations will be cancelled and action taken against those operating illegally.”
A source said all security agencies’ managements had been asked to appear before the teams along with their records. The agencies had been asked to bring to the team heads their licences and criterion for recruiting their personnel.
“We will check whether a security agency before securing a licence had fulfilled all requirements to run such businesses.”
The records of the personnel of the agencies like whether they are from armed services or they hail from some other background and information about their previous doings will be reviewed in detail by the teams, the source said. How many of the agencies had submitted complete bio-data of their personnel to the police concerned would also be checked, he added.
Also to be brought on record was the service structure of the security agencies which included how much a personnel was being paid by his company and what other benefits did he enjoy during his service, like leaves.
Official sources said the Punjab government had asked the police heads to make the private security agencies bound to take responsibility of their personnel in case they were found involved in crimes.
Thursday’s killing of the son of business tycoon Seth Abid and four others is the latest incident in which the killer turned out to be a guard of a private agency. The guard working for Rs3,000 a month had blamed his company for keeping him overburdened and misusing him in illegal land occupation.
There have been some other such heinous crimes committed by the security agencies’ personnel during the last couple of months. The lockers of banks on Lytton Road and in Allama Iqbal Town were broken and valuables taken away.
|
|
|
|
