KARACHI, Jan 31: The Inspector-General of Sindh Police, Syed Kamal Shah, has expressed the hope that with the coming into effect of the new police setup from Feb 1, police’s performance would register substantial improvement.

He was speaking at a press briefing held on the eve of the enforcement of the new police system on Thursday here in the Central Police Office.

Flanked by the newly appointed Additional IG for the Capital City Police of Karachi, Asad Jehangir, and the DIG Karachi, who will be DIG (Operation) from Friday, Tariq Jamil, the IG explained the main features of the police reforms, restructuring of the Sindh Police and Karachi Police.

He said under the new system, there would be 19 Towns (Clifton would be treated as 19th Town for policing purposes), 10 SP and nine DSP-rank officers.

With the division of five districts into 19 Towns, police would be in a better position to control crime. This decentralization would increase the efficiency of police significantly, he said.

The IG said police reforms did not mean that people would start seeing new police from Feb 1 on the streets of Karachi.

“If changes are not seen in initial weeks or months, it would not mean that police reforms have failed, as police have yet to receive financial and technical support and assistance promised by the federal government, under the police reforms,” he maintained.

He said investigation had been separated from law and order, security and other miscellaneous police duties. This would focus attention on investigation of cases by dedicated investigating staff who had been selected on the basis of experience and skill, he added.

The investigation branch would have specialized units for serious crimes, such as murder, robberies, kidnappings, etc. The specialization in the investigation branch would improve the standard of investigation and would give a better detection rate, he said.

He said policing in Karachi would now be divided into four main branches: operational branch, investigation, traffic and administration.

Since each branch was headed by a DIG, it would rationalize the workload of policing this city of 14 million people, the IG said.

Under the reforms package, the government would allocate funds to bear the investigation cost of cases, which would curb corruption to a large extent, he added.

The IG said now there would be 19 field commanders to be called Town Police Officers (TPOs) who would be the in charge of smaller and manageable Town police force, add agencies.

Mr Shah said now, instead of five districts SSPs, 19 TPOs would be available to attend to public complaints/grievances.

He said the Madadgar “15” Force would now be organized in all the 19 Towns. Police would operate in 19 Towns and five zonal headquarters, he added.

The chief of the Karachi Police would be called the Capital City Police Officer.

The IG maintained that on an average Rs20,000 were needed for investigation of a murder case which police could not afford due to resource constraints. However, he said under the reforms package the government would allocate funds to bear the cost of investigation.

He said every year about 46,000 criminal cases were registered at police stations in the province and 36,000 of them were of heinous nature.