ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan set up on Tuesday four committees to fine-tune policies on exit control list (ECL), grant of arms licenses and permission for bullet-proofing of vehicles and regulating private security companies.

Each committee will be headed by a senior official of the rank of additional secretary and required to submit proposals in a week.

The decision was taken during a meeting convened to deliberate on the existing policies, which in their present form had been found to be flawed by the minister.

He said that only progressive, proactive, transparent and effective policies could cater to the needs of people and meet contemporary challenges. He said that the policies should provide maximum benefit to tax-payers and law-abiding citizens.

At the outset of the meeting, the minister presented some ideas which, he said, should be incorporated in the policies.

He said that unfortunately the ECL had been misused in the past as names of people had been placed on the list and removed from it at personal whims (of rulers).

He said that no heed was paid to the anomalies nor was any effort made to rectify flaws in the system.

Chaudhry Nisar stressed the need for putting in place a proper system for making entries into the ECL, with clearly defined parameters to recommend entries into the list.

About the grant of permission for bullet-proofing of vehicles, he said that a mechanism should be devised to ascertain the need for grant of such permission to any individual. He said that an assessment committee should be set up within the ministry to scrutinise and analyze such requests before referring them to intelligence agencies.

The minister said that he was surprised to note that even those people who hardly paid any taxes applied for the facility, which cost millions of rupees.

He said that the facility should be provided only to those people who were regular tax-payers and had genuine security concerns. “We need to discourage those elements who use bullet proof vehicles as status symbol.”

He said that there should be a centralised office at the federal level to maintain record of bulletproof vehicles and the record should be immediately updated in case of a change of the ownership of such a vehicle.

On regulating private security companies, the minister emphasised the need for reviewing the services provided by the companies to their clients.

He said that a license holder security company must have a skilled and properly trained workforce.

The minister said that the policy on security companies should make it mandatory for them to look after an employee if he was injured while on duty and take care of his family in case of an employee’s death in the line of duty.

He said that there should be a co-relation between the earning of security companies and the compensation they paid to their employees.

The policy might bind the security companies to mandatory insurance of the employees, the minister proposed.

About the policy on grant of arms license, he said that the government was sincerely trying to introduce a system that benefited all.

Pointing out that the provinces were authorised to issue arms licenses, he said that it was anomalous that there was a ban on the issuance of the licences in Punjab and at the federal level while they were being issued in other provinces.

The minister stressed the need for early re-validation of the existing arms licenses and tasked the committee on the licences to come up with a proposal on how to expedite the process.

Again, the minister called for maximum facilitation of tax payers.

He advised the committee to deliberate on how a check could be maintained on the number of licenses to be issued.

He noted that it was equally important to devise a mechanism for regulating arms dealers and their business.

The meeting was attended by the secretary of the interior ministry, the commissioner of Islamabad and officials of the National Database Registration authority and other departments concerned.

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2015

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