HYDERABAD: Sindh Inspector General of Police (IGP) A.D. Khowaja on Tuesday said that actions being taken by the Counter-Terrorism Department of the Sindh police were based on intelligence and aimed at targeting terrorists and their facilitators.

He was speaking at a luncheon hosted in his honour by the Hyderabad SITE Association and later to reporters present there.

He asked industrialists to invest in security of their premises through adequate lighting and camera monitoring arrangements. He disagreed with the idea of a kiosk to be set up within the SITE area, saying that it would amount to waste of police resources. He said that police patrolling could be intensified in the area.

He also disagreed with deputy chief of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) Nadeem Siddiqui’s point that SHO of the SITE police should always be posted in consultation with the Hyderabad SITE Association. “This would negate the spirit of the apex court’s order ... every SHO should serve people without any favour or pressure in a professional way”, he argued.

IG Khowaja said that police needed assistance of society as well in order to control the genie of terrorism. He described law and order across Sindh as completely satisfactory, peaceful and praiseworthy.

In reply to a question, he said counterterrorism operations were not impacting police’s overall welfare works in any way. “Whatever resources are being diverted to the Counter-Terrorism Department are in fact additional allocations in the budget,” he added.

Replying to another question, he said no inquiry was ordered against [Malir] SSP Rao Anwar. “It’s an inquiry into a firing incident in Karachi being conducted by a committee led by the additional IG,” he explained.

The IG also denied any interference in police department.

He said that computerisation of police stations across Sindh was under way without any extra allocations having been demanded. In one year’s time, Sindh police would witness a “substantial change”. He said that training and recruitment were being done on a merit basis.

He agreed with the association’s chairman, Saaman Mal, that Hyderabad faced traffic jams, but argued that it was primarily owing to the fact that the city did not witness infrastructural development over the past two decades. “There has been a sharp increase in the number of bikes plying in the city but roads could not be widened,” he observed, and noted with concern that “unfortunately, the city did not get any orange line or green line”.

He told the audience that Hyderabad’s infrastructural development had fallen prey to the fact that it was located close to the metropolitan city of Karachi, where most investment was diverted in the shape of entrepreneurship. It was a natural disadvantage for Hyderabad, which was indeed a historical city. “Its people don’t face the issues which their counterparts in Karachi keep confronting,” he observed.

IG Khowaja said that a new system of ‘Madadgar 15’ was launched in Karachi with great difficulty and outsourced for quick response with the permission of Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah. He said that a call centre was established in Karachi for round-the-clock response. He said he wanted to set up one such centre in Hyderabad for which he would need assistance from the business community as well. He said 25 new bikes would be provided to the proposed centre.

Saaman Mal and Nadeem Siddi­qui also spoke.

Hyderabad DIG Javed Alam Odho and SSP Pir Mohammad Shah were among those present at the luncheon.

Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2017