KARACHI: The Sindh government on Saturday announced a 10 per cent increase in the budget for security in the provincial budget of 2015-16 with a plan to recruit 10,000 more policemen in the next financial year to ‘improve police to citizens ratio, especially in Karachi’.

“Our commitment to establish and maintain law and order is also evident from the fact that the home department is the second largest department in terms of resource allocation with a share of 13 per cent in total current revenue expenditure in 2015-16,” said Sindh Finance Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah while delivering budget speech at the Sindh Assembly.

“The home department [including police, jails, Rangers and other security agencies] has been allocated Rs64.458 billion in next financial year which is an increase of 10 per cent from the outgoing financial year’s budget estimates of Rs58.623 billion,” he said.

The overall budget allocation for the Sindh police and the Rangers had been increased from Rs50.915 billion to Rs61.84 billion and from Rs2.22 billion to Rs2.448 billion, respectively, the minister said. “To encourage and support our police, the salaries of Sindh Police have been raised and brought at par with the Punjab police and outstanding performing officers and officials have been granted cash reward in millions of rupees,” he said.

“I salute the police and the Rangers officials who suffered wounds and laid down their lives so that the people can live in peace,” said Mr Shah.

‘I salute the police and the Rangers officials who suffered wounds and laid down their lives so that the people can live in peace’

“Although there can be no adequate compensation for their act of valour, to recognise their services, compensation cheques of over Rs500 million have been distributed among the families of the Shaheed and the wounded police officials.”

During his speech, the minister also briefly discussed measures to modernise Sindh’s security apparatus, including equipping the police force with state-of-the-art operational and security equipment such as bullet-proof police vans, jackets, helmets, arms and ammunition and CCTV cameras. For these measures, he said, Rs4.115 billion had been released in the outgoing financial year whereas Rs6.23 billion was allocated for the financial year 2015-16.

“To strengthen Sindh Police and to address the issue of shortage, 10,030 posts have been created in the budget of 2015-16, which will improve police to citizen ratio, especially in Karachi and generally in Sindh, at the cost of Rs1 billion,” the minister said.

Similarly, he said, some Rs2 billion had been allocated for the purchase of transport and Rs500 million had been earmarked to make 200 vehicles bullet-proof and another 100 bomb-proof. An amount of Rs2 billion had been allocated for the purchase of new weapons and other assets for police, he added.

“Rs650 million has been allocated for the expansion of security surveillance system and for the purchase of other equipment for technical advancement of police, while Rs250 million has been earmarked to upgrade and renovate the police training centres,” Mr Shah said.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2015

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