KHYBER: The meagre financial assistance and limited budgetary allocations for the newly converted police in Khyber district are seriously affecting the overall performance and moral of the force.

According to official record, currently the total strength of Khyber police is 3,707, who were previously serving as Khasadar and Levies personnel. They were converted into police force in May 2019 in the light of the decision of the provincial cabinet.

The cabinet had also announced provision of all the perks and privileges at the pattern of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police to the entire newly converted force in all the newly merged tribal districts.

However, the promises the provincial government and the higher police authorities made with the ‘refurbished’ tribal force remained elusive despite lapse of one year.

The official record available with Dawn reveals that so far a ‘paltry’ amount of Rs200,000 was sanctioned for the working of over 3,700 policemen in Khyber with three police stations of Bara, Landi Kotal and Jamrud.

DPO says he makes all out efforts to alleviate grievances of policemen

According to the record, a total of 480 First Information Reports (FIRs) were registered at the three police stations during the last one year.

Sources told Dawn that although the local police officials were satisfied with the ‘confidence and trust’ the local tribesmen were reposing in the new policing system by registering complaints and FIRs, yet the cost of the investigation was much higher than the funds allocated for the force.

“Registering an FIR, taking the accused to the courts, situated in Peshawar, bringing them back to the local police station and then officiating the courts in the concerned cases require additional financial resources and handsome assistance,” said sources.

They said that with the current allocations of Rs200,000, a paltry amount of Rs418 was spent on dealing with just one FIR.

According to the record, only 532 weapons were available with Khyber police for total strength of 3,707. Sources said that the rest of them were using their own arms with no allocations for ammunition and maintenance.

Security experts have termed it a huge security risk owing to the strategic location of Khyber, situated on the border with Afghanistan with its own history of having indigenous militant groups and organisations in recent past and their affiliates still operating, albeit clandestinely.

Sources said that the DPO office had only five mobile vehicles at its disposal for three police stations out of which two were out of order. One of the three vehicles in working conditions is under the permanent use of DPO.

Every police station is given 1,000 litres of fuel every month but police officials posted at there were not satisfied with the quantity of fuel allocation and said that in most cases, especially conducting raids, making arrests and dealing with investigations of the FIRs, they used their own vehicles.

DPO Dr Mohammad Iqbal, when contacted, acknowledged the financial crises and said that he was personally making all out efforts to ‘alleviate’ the grievances of Khyber police.

He said that the pace of delivery of promised assistance to new the tribal police was slow but not denied and the IGP would honour all his commitments with the tribal police.

He said that he himself was pushing for additional official attention to address all the legitimate demands of Khyber police at the earliest.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2020