KARACHI: The city commissioner has asked deputy commissioners and other officials to ensure that banks in their respective administrative areas have security bunkers inside their branches across the city for the security of public life and their assets.

In a meeting, which was presided over by Commissioner Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui, security arrangements at the financial institutions in the metropolis were reviewed on Tuesday.

Representatives of private security companies, deputy commissioners and other officials attended the meeting called just a day after a security guard and his accomplices took away Rs170 million from a bank in Lahore. Karachi has already witnessed 11 bank robberies so far this year.

“The meeting decided that banks would be asked to build bunkers inside the branches for the security of their own assets and lives,” Karachi commissioner Mr Siddiqui told Dawn after the meeting.

“It has been mandatory and deputy commissioners have been asked to call regular meetings to check security arrangements of banks in their administrative areas and measures taken by the banks.”

However, the meeting was skipped by the key stakeholders — representatives of banks — for unknown reasons.

Asked about the effectiveness of such a decision in their absence, he said that bank representatives had always been attending such meetings in the past. Whenever they were invited, they attended the meetings, he said. This time there must be some “lack of communication” leading to their absence in the meeting that was called to discuss security of their businesses, the commissioner added.

‘Fake companies’

The Karachi commissioner, however, agreed with the plea of private security companies about issuance of automatic weapon licences to upgrade efficiency of private guards deputed at banks.

The meeting also called for verification of employees’ data of security companies and also action against “some fake companies” which were operating in the city.

In the Lahore robbery, a security guard who worked at the branch of Burj Bank near Hussain Chowk was involved. He along with his two accomplices held the staff at gunpoint and took away Rs170m, police said.

In Karachi, too, security guards were found assisting bandits in execution of their jobs instead of putting up resistance, making the whole security system questionable.

“We support their [private security companies] call for compatible arms for the private security companies but would definitely convey their concern and request to the Sindh home department so that they could take up this matter with the federal government, as this subject falls under the interior ministry’s protocol,” said Mr Siddiqui.

Police investigators claimed to have ‘solved’ more than half of the 11 bank robberies, which have been reported this year in Karachi, with the arrest of over a dozen suspects. During the course of investigation, it emerged that multiple gangs were operating in the metropolis with different objectives, the officials said.

The police authorities blamed the management of mostly private banks for not investing enough money in the security of their branches and also question guards who did not put up resistance to armed robberies at all.

“You would rarely find a foreign bank being robbed here in the city,” said retired Brig Rasheed Ali Malik of All-Pakistan Security Agencies Association after the meeting. “It all depends on banks’ planning and priorities. The branches of foreign banks, which are also secured by our companies, are hardly targeted. This reflects the difference [in their priorities] and their investment in security measures.”

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2015