KARACHI: The Sindh government campaign to computerise more than a million arm licences has failed to meet its desired results as in the first place less than half a million licensees responded to the new requirement and second, authorities with lethargic attitude could verify and print only 3,539 computerised documents that forced a third time extension in the deadline by six months, it emerged on Friday.

In a statement the Sindh home department announced to extend the deadline to May 19, 2015 which earlier ended on Oct 31, 2014.

Although the statement mentioned the procedure for issuing licence, it did not elaborate any reason for the delay in issuing computerised licences to those who had filed the applications months ago.

“The Sindh home department has extended the period of revalidation of manual arms licences in Sindh to May 19, 2015 with the same processing fee of Rs1,000 to be deposited on Nadra account and penalty of Rs500 to be deposited by the arms licence holder in National Bank in Sindh government’s relevant head of account,” said the statement.

“Home secretary Dr Niaz Ali Abbasi has asked the manual arms licence holders to submit their application for computerisation or revalidation of arms licences in the NADRA counter set up in the offices of the deputy commissioners in the province.”

The Sindh government in September 2013 banned issuance of new licences before launching a campaign against illicit weapons in Karachi in Oct 2013 in line with the Supreme Court orders that included verification of hundreds of thousands of licences.

Later, the people were asked to complete the computerisation process for their licences till Dec 31, 2013. However, before the deadline ended, the Sindh government further extended it till Jan 31. Then, Feb 15 deadline was set before Oct 31, 2014 was set as final one.

After the deadline, the government also announced that it would launch a campaign to recover illegal weapons. However, that campaign might not begin anytime soon considering the cumbersome process of verification and computerisation of the arms licences going on in every district of Sindh.

The figures released by the home department the other day suggest that the initiative taken by the provincial government to de-weaponise the province, establish proper computerised database and monitor the arms stock is coming to nought.

“The home secretary has directed the officers concerned to ensure and expedite the printing process of computerisation of arms licence books,” said another statement of the home department issued the other day after a meeting chaired by the home secretary.

Although Dr Abbassi ‘issued directives’ for expedition of the process, the statement did not elaborate any reason for so much delay and what action he would take against those responsible for it.

The details later provided by the statement raised serious questions over the efforts of the authorities to meet the challenge.

“It was also informed that so far 1,057,456 manual arms licences were issued in the province and the division wise details are: Karachi - 254,255; Hyderabad - 376,401; Mirpurkhas - 124,771; Sukkur - 150,923 and Larkana - 150,553,” said the statement.

“The total number of forms submitted by manual arms licence holders to deputy commissioners or Nadra for computerisation are 424,430 and break up is; Karachi - 75,940; Hyderabad - 153,537; Mirpurkhas - 52,856; Sukkur - 71,582 and Larkana - 70,515.”

It was added that Nadra had started printing arms licence books at the Sindh home department and so far 3,539 books had been printed, which were being dispatched by Nadra to deputy commissioners and Nadra would also inform through SMS applicants for collection of the same.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2014