ISLAMABAD: Police inspectors’ promotions is in jeopardy as they could not attend a mandatory advance course, which was held early this year at Lahore and Swat, sources told Dawn on Thursday.

Seven inspectors of the capital police had qualified for the advance course, but the then Inspector General of Police Tariq Masood Yasin denied them permission to attend it.

The former IGP asked the inspectors that the course was not necessary for promotion to the rank of DSP. The chief cop asked them that since they were holding key positions in the capital police, they should focus on their job instead of vacating the posts.

Inspector Hakim Khan was serving as SHO Secretariat, Inspector Rukhsar Mehdi as SHO Bani Gala, Inspector Ulfat Arif was serving at Homicide Unit, inspectors Iqbal Khan and Mehfooz Kiani at Counter Terrorism Force, inspectors Tahir Khan and Mian Ashraf as staff officers of IGP.

Seven posts of DSPs in the capital police are vacant after the retirement and promotion of as many officers, they stated, adding that out of the seven inspectors, who denied permission to attend the course, three of them were among the top seven senior officers and they would have been promoted had they attended the course.

In capital, there is an SOP (standard operating procedure) for the promotion of policemen, according to which attending the course was mandatory, but there was no such rule in this regard.

A list of 16 officers were sent to the interior ministry for the decision by Central Police Office, they stated, adding that the list also includes the seven inspectors but it was mentioned in front of their names that they had not attended the advance course.

The ministry’s departmental promotion committee (DPC) will most likely to meet before August end.

“If these inspectors may not be promoted by the DPC, they will have to wait for the next committee’s meeting,” the officials stated, adding that the timeframe of the next meeting of the DPC was not known as it meets only after the availability of seats.

Earlier, several inspectors of the capital police got promotion to DSP rank without doing the advance course, they stated, adding that before 2007 majority of the inspectors used to be promoted without attending the course.

Inspector General of Police Khalid Khatak was not available for his comments over the issue.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2017