KARACHI, Dec 7: An inter-provincial conference reviewed here on Wednesday the law and order situation in the country. It described the overall situation as satisfactory, but expressed concern over increasing incidents of street crime, particularly in big cities.

The conference was provided over by Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Sherpao and was attended by home ministers and interior secretaries of Sindh and Balochistan, inspectors-general of police of the four provinces, heads of civil armed forces and intelligence agencies, inspectors-general of prisons and other officials.

Briefing journalists, Mr Sherpao said the conference analyzed the government’s achievements and weaknesses.

He said that the improved law and order situation would help bring foreign investments to the country. The next inter- provincial conference would be held in Quetta after six months, he added.

Mr Sherpao said the law and order situation in the entire country was good and the government had decided to take a number of steps to improve it further.

“The meeting discussed at length the issues of terrorism and sectarian militancy, distribution of hate literature, use of loudspeakers for political purpose, and extremism. It expressed satisfaction over the steps taken by the government to contain the problems and decided to accelerate its efforts in this regard,” he said.

Those fanning sectarian hatred and publishers, printers, distributors and sellers of the hate literature would be severely death with, he said.

He said concerted efforts would be made and a campaign would be launched by all the provinces to arrest the most wanted terrorists. Monitoring cells would be created at national and provincial levels.

“To effectively deal with terrorism and other forms of organized crimes, it has been decided to inter-connect database of Nadra, FIA and other agencies with one strong integrated database.”

A project for a database in police stations of criminals had been approved by Ecnec and it would be taken up soon, he said.

Answering a question, Mr Sherpao said: “The government has banned foreign students from getting education in religious seminaries.”

Citing reasons for the decision, he said that whenever any student going back to his country was found involved in any sectarian or terrorist activity, efforts were made to find a link with a seminary in Pakistan, giving a bad name to the country. He said the government had prepared a list of 1,200 foreign students in various seminaries and most of them had gone back. Others were preparing to leave, he added.

The meeting decided to establish joint checkposts at inter- provincial borders and on highways to check arms smuggling and movement of miscreants. These checkposts would be manned by officials of police, Rangers, Anti-Narcotics Force, customs, and Nadra.

About reports of human rights violations in various parts of the country, he said that special attention was paid to the issue of human rights in general, and of rights of women and minorities in particular.

“We have decided to take punitive action against violations of human rights, women’s rights and minorities’ rights. Stern action will be taken against officials found involved in human rights violation,” he added.

Speaking about prison reforms, the interior minister that at a recent meeting in Islamabad the government had taken certain decisions which were reviewed and endorsed at Wednesday’s conference.

He said the decisions included expediting the process of setting up high-security prisons, creation of secured barracks on the premises of prisons as a temporary arrangement, increasing the percentage of parole and probation, providing psychological counselling to prisoners and giving financial support for repatriation of drug addicts.

He said a committee had been constituted to review prison rules and propose amendments to ameliorate the lot of prisoners.

He also said that the government had decided to improve the security of gas pipelines, power distribution lines, important installations, and government assets. Steps were also being taken to provide maximum security to the Khokhrapar-Monabao train route that is expected to reopen soon.