KARACHI, Aug 18: The provincial government has decided to recruit around 2,000 retired personnel of the armed forces in the Sindh police for security duties in Karachi, it emerged on Sunday.

“This is for the first time that the Sindh police will recruit retired armed forces personnel for the post of constables,” said Karachi police chief Ghulam Qadir Thebo.

He said there were estimated 25,000 policemen for the provincial capital and around 8,000 of them were guarding sensitive installations as well as protecting important personalities.

“The retired soldiers will not be recruited for policing at police stations… they will be deployed for security duties at sensitive installations, etc, and the regular policemen will be withdrawn from these places for policing in the metropolis,” said the city police chief. “There is an acute shortage of manpower that needed to be filled on an urgent basis.” He said as the recruitment of fresh constables would take time due to their training process, it was decided by the competent authorities to recruit retired soldiers as they were already trained.

He said that in the past, the police tended to give preference to retired soldiers for recruitment but in small numbers. This time, around 2,000 retired soldiers were expected to be appointed, he added. He said that advertisements to this effect had been given in newspapers through which applications were invited from retired soldiers.

The city police chief hoped that the recruitment process would likely to be completed very soon to overcome the shortage of manpower.

He said that besides the retired soldiers, more police constables would also be recruited soon.