PESHAWAR, Oct 23: Police have set up 50 pickets in the five earthquake-hit districts of the NWFP to check robberies and abduction of children by unscrupulous elements, said a senior official.

Addressing a press conference at the Central Police Office, IGP Riffat Pasha said that five truckloads of relief goods had been looted to-date, mostly by the quake-affected people in Shangla and Battagram districts.

Three shopkeepers were arrested for their alleged involvement in the Battagram incident, he added.

He said 23 pickets had been established in the Mansehra district, four in Abbottabad, nine in Shangla and seven each in Battagram and Kohistan to prevent theft and other crime.

The IGP said that about 1.6 million out of 3.86 million population of these five districts had been affected by the disaster. The police system also collapsed in these areas, he added.

He said that about 1,100 police officials were affected by the quake in these districts making it difficult for police to control law and order.

“We had to deploy 3,071 personnel of the Frontier Constabulary, Police Training Collage, Recruit Training Wing and Frontier Reserve Police to control the situation,” he pointed out.

About 80 per cent of police buildings, including the police line in Abbottabad, either collapsed or cracks developed in them making them unsafe. Most of these buildings were in Battagram, he said.

In the districts of Shangla, Kohistan and Mansehra, 60, 50 and 40 per cent of police buildings, respectively, had either been destroyed or rendered unsafe, he added.

Police vehicles, communication system and arms and ammunition were either destroyed or damaged, he said, adding that the communication system had been restored on a temporary basis.

Mr Pasha said that the quake had roughly cost the NWFP police department about Rs200 million and added that restoration of the system would take some time.

He said that a World Bank team was coming to the city to assess the damage. “We will brief the World Bank team about the losses during its three-day visit starting from Monday,” he added.