As the government has been working on the National Action Plan (NAP) to combat terrorism, critics say one of its provisions related to the temporarily residents does not serve the purpose of gathering information about all the tenants.

Officials said none of the serving or retired government employees, especially those living in housing societies, was willing to provide the details of their tenants or themselves to the police. On the other hand, the police picked up common citizens who have no proper information about the new law.

Under the Punjab Information of Temporary Residents Ordinance 2015, property dealers, landlords and tenants are bound to inform the police within 48 hours after giving possession of the premises. But hotels and guesthouses have to inform the police about the check-in of a guest within three hours.

Those caught by the police for not following the law have to face a summery trial as the offence is non-bailable.

Muzamil Hameed, the manager of a hotel located at Liaquat Road, was arrested for failing to provide the details of two Indian guests staying in his hotel on August 24.

Though the Indians possessed valid travel documents, the hotel official was sent to jail for violating the law.

People who wanted to inform the police about their tenants are first asked by the police to take a security survey form and get it verified from a local councilor before submitting it to the police. They are also asked to bring photocopies of the blank form as the police lacked funds to print more forms.

“In the early stage of the implementation of the NAP ordinance, there were very few people who wanted to get their tenants registered with the police. However, with the passage of time the citizens have started contacting the police to get information about the ordinance,” a police official said requesting anonymity.

When asked whether any citizen was exempted from providing information to the police about their tenant, he said: “No one is exempted from the law but people living in some housing colonies are not following the law as they claim that they are government servants and already registered with their societies.”

He said the new law was not much effective in tracing the whereabouts of all the tenants because a landlord gets his tenant registered with the police but does not give the details of his children or other family members.

While justifying the arrest of the owners of houses, hotels, guesthouses and hostels without launching an awareness campaign, Regional Police Officer (RPO) Mohammad Wisal Fakhar Sultan Raja said: “A law is a law and people should be aware of it.”

But critics say the government is using the police to implement the law and arrest people before making them aware of the new law and preparing the database of tenants. “How the police can keep the database of tenants when they are even not having the updated database of criminals,” a senior police officer remarked.

Mohammad Sarfraz Abbasi, the president of the hotel association, expressed reservations over the police raids on hotels as he believed the government should have launched an awareness campaign about the new law before starting the raids which caused panic among the guests as well as affected the hotel business.

“Even when lawyers and judges are not fully aware of the new law, how a common citizen can be expected of having information about the law.”

He said hardly about two per cent of the citizens knew about the new law, adding it was the duty of the government to create information about the law.

Mr Abbasi was of the view that the government’s move to introduce the law to curb terrorism was important but the police should not misuse the law.

The police said they registered 110 cases related to the violation of the law of information of temporary residents and arrested 180 individuals from July 1 to August 28.

As far as the conviction rate in NAP cases is concerned, the RPO has already said the police were doing their best to implement the law but the conviction rate was not encouraging.

Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2015

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