KARACHI, Sept 29: The city administration had not received a single illegal weapon till Sunday, the third day of a de-weaponisation drive, as no one came forward to voluntarily surrender his illicit firearm, it emerged on Sunday.

The Sindh government had given holders of illicit weapons 15-day time to voluntarily surrender their firearms as part of its de-weaponisation campaign on a directive of the apex court. It also imposed a ban on the issuance of new arms licences in Karachi.

The home department and officials in the five districts of the city confirmed that so far they had received no illegal weapon surrendered voluntarily by any citizen. However, they gave a host of reasons behind the holders’ reluctance to surrender their illicit arms to the government and hoped that the campaign would catch up its pace in the week starting on Monday.

“The campaign was officially launched on Friday, which was the last day of the week preceded by weekend. We hope that our campaign will gather pace from Monday,” said a senior official.

The government has fixed Oct 11 as the cut-off date for the holders of illicit weapons to surrender their firearms.

He said that the government would launch a campaign to de-weaponise the city if the deadline was not extended.

The city administration itself and all the five district administrations individually corroborated the fact that no one had come forward as yet to surrender an illegal weapon.

Karachi West, some parts of which are notoriously regarded as Karachi’s ‘Waziristan’, is believed to have far more illicit weapons than the city’s other four districts.

“It is the only district where schools have been targeted and polio workers attacked. It is the most dangerous part of Karachi,” said another senior official.

The Karachi West administration too had not received any weapon surrendered forcing it to seek support of the mosques to encourage the holders of illicit weapons to cooperate.

“So far we have not received a weapon surrendered by anyone. The reason could be that two weekly holidays came right after the day when we launched the drive. Besides, most people may not be aware of our effort despite it has vigorously been advertised,” said Karachi West deputy commissioner Ganhwar Khan Leghari.

“We are going to make announcements through mosques across the district so that people who are still not aware of the campaign should know and submit their weapons to their area authorities,” he told Dawn.

He said for people who feared that they could be intercepted by any law enforcement agency in the middle of their journey to the deputy commissioner’s office or a police station and faced unwanted hardships the district administration had a solution.

“For those who don’t want to come out of their homes with illegal weapons we have made arrangements. We are publicising our control room and assistant commissioners’ numbers through announcements on mosques where they could call and wait for our officials to take their weapons without any hazard,” said Mr Leghari.

A senior official in Karachi-east emphasised on the people to surrender their weapons and assured that the holders would not face any criminal case until the immunity period that would expire on Oct 11.

“We have assured the people that they will face no case if they surrender their illegal weapons, yet we are waiting for anyone to come forward,” said a senior official.

Similar statements came from the officials of Karachi’s South, Central and Malir districts.

The provincial government, in its decision taken last week, announced that after Oct 11, the drive would be strengthened and defaulters would be sentenced to life imprisonment or forfeiture of their moveable and immoveable properties.

For adoption of a transparent system for the issuance of arms licences, the government said the responsibility of any irregularity if ‘found and proved’ by intelligence reports would be fixed on the authorised officers of the district administration.