January 06, 2009	Tuesday	Muharram 08, 1430

KARACHI, Jan 5: The Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) has contested some of the points of a report captioned: “Taxpayers pay for posh areas policing” and issued the following statement:

The CPLC would like to correct some of the points which seem to be a result of misunderstanding about the concept of CPLC-Neighbourhood Care Projects being run in Karachi.

“Firstly the correspondent has given an impression that police personnel of the area police station are engaged for these projects. This is totally incorrect. These personnel have been obtained from the Reserve Police Force and are also provided to the area police in addition to their duties as and when required, especially in emergency or rescue operations, i.e. dacoties, robberies, etc.

“The arrangement between the association and the police has no concern with the CPLC–Neighbourhood Care Projects.

Terming the Neighbourhood Care projects as “Elitist model of policing” is most unfortunate. Instead, these projects are a great example of building relationship between citizens and police.

The concept of community policing has far reaching impacts; in fact, CPCL is gradually expanding these projects. It depends on the residents of an area to come forward with their estimated resources and persons who have the passion to serve their area for better living and security. “The contention of the reporter that CPLC members demand that policemen should remain at their houses is totally baseless and has nothing to do with the ground realities.”