RAWALPINDI: The Punjab government will establish a municipal police in all the 36 districts, including Rawalpindi, to help the civic bodies enforce their rules and regulations and end their dependence on the local police.

The local government and community development department has directed the municipal corporations, district councils and municipal committees to submit their requirements for the numbers of personnel by January 30.

The force will work under the mayor and the chairmen of the district council and the municipal committee concerned. It will help the municipal corporations, district councils and municipal committees implement building by-laws, enforce anti-encroachment campaigns and municipal laws.

A senior official of the Rawalpindi Municipal Corporation (RMC) told Dawn that under the Punjab Local Government Act 2013, a local government other than a union council may, with the prior approval of the government, establish and maintain municipal wardens. The government would specify the duties for the force.

New force will help civic bodies enforce their rules and regulations and end dependence on police

In order to strengthen the local government, he said, the government wanted to establish a force to perform specified duties.

“To assess the administrative as well as financial implications, an input from every local government is required to finalise the structure of the wardens keeping in view the financial strength of the local governments.”

The official said the local government department had asked the municipal corporations, district councils and municipal committees to submit the number of personnel they would require such as head wardens, wardens and deputy wardens on the analogy of sub-inspector (BPS-14), assistant sub-inspector (BPS-9) and constable (BPS-5) under Police Order 2002.

“It is not a new idea as such a provision was available in the local government ordinance 2001 introduced by Gen Pervez Musharraf but was not implemented.”

He said civic bodies had failed to launch aggressive operations against encroachments and implement building by-laws due to the absence of such a force. “The police are busy in other works such as controlling crimes and maintaining law and order and if civic bodies hired the police for a week or more for any specific campaign it would create problems for the police department,” he said.

The official said the police were also facing a shortage of staff and it was not possible for them to deploy personnel with the civic bodies. “The new force will help the civic bodies improve the local governance system as municipal magistrates have already been appointed,” he said.

When contacted, Chief Municipal Officer Khalid Javed Goraya said the new force would be appointed in the municipal corporation soon and in this regard the RMC had suggested hiring more than 200 personnel for the 46 union councils in the city.

He said the finance department was working to ascertain if the RMC would be able to pay the force from its own budget as the government had asked civic bodies to bear the expenditure of the force.

“The mayor and the district council chairman will be the administrative head of the force in their respective areas and a special station will be established for the force in the offices of the civic bodies,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2018