LAHORE: At a time when the Punjab police claim to have embraced technology to improve the complaint redress system, some people believe the decades-old “open court” mechanism had its own benefits.

Senior police officers seem to have given up the practice of holding open court which was considered an appropriate forum to hear the distressed out. And lending sympathetic hearing to the aggrieved citizens through police courts has been a key strategy of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif as well.

There are complaints, especially from those visiting Lahore from other cities and districts, that the new system hardly works to their advantage and they miss out on the opportunity of having direct interaction with the provincial police chief.

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“Now they are being asked to submit their plaints to the Complaint Cell at the IG Office and wait for action on their requests. This deprives them of an opportunity to share their grievances in the presence of police officers and the opponent parties,” goes the complaint.

Under the decades-old strategy, two kinds of exercises were conducted by the police officers. The first practice was holding open court to address public concerns against police or private parties and the other was organising police ‘darbars’ to hear plaints of the policemen, an official told Dawn.

“The practice was that the police officials were called in person in open court to face allegations in the presence of the general public and senior police management. The anxiety and fear factor associated with open court appearance had been sort of a check on the field policemen doing duties at the police stations and the strategy brought good results,” he said.

The official said now police rely on figures being generated through computers and there’s the growing concern about transparency.

Accentuating the utility of the open court system, he said, many provincial police officers in the past had been arranging courts at their offices and one former IGP would hear 500 or so complaints in every sitting (open court) at his office. The officer attended 231 open courts at the Central Police Office during eight months in 2012 in which 5,428 complainants appeared. Most people would come from Kasur, Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, Faisalabad, Okara and Hafizabad, he said, claiming that many complaints would be addressed on the spot and others on the basis of extensive follow-up.

The current scheme of things has Front Desks, Complaint Management System (CMS) and Police Station Record Management System (PSRMS) in vogue. Police say the latest system is a step in the right direction and will yield positive results with the passage of time.

The spokesman for the IGP said the IT-oriented schemes were the need of the hour and nearly 85pc people have their issues solved. He said people could submit their complaints on new Punjab police helpline 8787 through text message or call.

He said many people still visit the IGP office, where they are afforded an opportunity to share their concerns with senior police officers and in some cases, the police chief himself attends the visitors.

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2017