POLICING was once a noble profession in our part of the world. Then the colonials arrived and rest is all history.
Policing was institutionalized to the point of sickness — add nausea. Thus today the police exists only to serve the individual interests of people in power, of those who are powerful and/or possess the ability to buy the power. The word ‘police’ is synonymous to corruption, tyranny and brutality, to say the least. In fact, the police force vie with each other to be the worst that they can be!
Several attempts to reform our police and/or raise a police force capable of protecting and serving the citizenry have failed for one reason or the other. But all is not lost. A group of men and women are setting new standards in policing without making a lot of fuss about it. This group goes about their daily duty with a singular objective: to serve and protect people placed under their jurisdiction. Their motto reads ‘Opted to Serve’ and apparently they take the ‘serve’ part of the slogan, very seriously. These people seldom make headlines and rarely get a photo-op. They are members of the the Pakistan Motorway Police.
Since its inauguration in the late nineties, Lahore-Islamabad Motorway and I, have grown to know each other rather well. I know its culverts, dips, bends and the shrubbery and the men that guard its flanks on both sides. I have had several encounters with the Motorway Police during the course of my travels on the highway during the last six years. Some of them were strictly business whilst the others absolutely informal. But neither were unpleasant to say the least.
The first time I had a tjte-tjte with the Motorway Police was in 1999, when I was pulled over for speeding. That was anxious moment but all my apprehensions proved to misapprehension, when I was politely informed of the violation, asked to handover my license which was returned with a ticket. Five minutes later I was on my way carrying a remorse for breaking the law. I had come out unscathed both physically and emotionally.
However, it was only recently that I really got to know the men who patrol the motorway. Earlier last month a young patrol officer, rather hesitantly asked me if I could take him to his camp about 50 kilometers from the Lahore Toll Plaza. We started off well.
He was articulate, educated and well mannered. As I found out he had finished his training and was one of the over 700 direct inductees in the force.
Prior to the recently launched programme by the MP, the officers were inducted from the provincial police force. He was proud of the fact that
* His selection was based on merit;
* The pay and benefits were beyond a simple graduate’s imagination; and
* More importantly he loved the working conditions, respect of others vis-a-vis the nature of his job and above all the job satisfaction. He requested not to named as he was unsure about the departmental policy on ‘interviews’.
Three days prior to the Eid I was again asked by yet another young officer for a ride. His name was Babar Faizan Rana and unlike his colleague, that I had travelled with earlier, he worked for Punjab Police and had opted to be sent to MP on deputation. The reason for his switch over were simple; his disdain for ‘thana culture’, poor salary and most of all pathetic working conditions.
He started working with PP at a paltry sum of Rs2500 and five years later, he was drawing Rs3500, barely enough to defray the smoking expenses let alone the rest.
He was drawing Rs13000 per month at MP which was Rs3000 less than what the ‘direct inductees’ were making. The difference he believed was to coax the ‘deputed’ personnel to take up the MP job permanently, and that’s exactly what he had planned to do. He was excited about the Eid as he was getting married the day after Eid and his long awaited promotion was due as well. I wished him good luck.
The odd thing about the two conversations was that, though one was from the police and the other a fresh graduate, they were similar in more than one ways. They were both self-motivated, took pride in their job, confident and yet not pompous. They were from middle-class families with a clear career plan. Both of them asked me to put on the seat belt the moment they embarked the car and Babar did not hesitate to lean over my shoulder to check my odometer as soon as he sensed that I was taking advantage of his company. There has to be more than what meets the eye, so I decided to take a tour of their camp at Khankah Dogran.
I caught up with the Chief Patrol Officer at his office and was amazed to see what fresh air, good working conditions and lack of ‘undue’ pressure can do a person’s demeanour. CPO Mueen Sabri, a tall man in his late forties, is as cordial and as polite as any police officer in the ‘civilized’ world can afford to be. He attributes the success of MP to a combination of ‘right people for the right job’, training, motivation and mutual respect. The officer of MP strictly works an eight hour per day, 26 days on and four days off regime. The tried and tested method of rewarding high achievers through Officer of the Month and subsequently Officer of the Year is strictly merit based.
He believes that people who initially joined the force were people who did not ‘feel at home’ with their parent department and therefore opted to switch. He was proud of the fact that during his tenure with the department he has yet to receive a single complaint by the motorist of any misdoings on part of his officers, and I have absolutely no reason to doubt his statement.
I must admit that it is the company of these men and women and having the knowledge that they are around a mere mortal like, I feel proud to a Pakistani and that says it all!
