KHYBER: The district administration temporarily suspended an anti-polio campaign on Monday after the sudden refusal of the local police to provide security to vaccination teams until the government met their demands for a proper service structure and right to pension.

A notification issued by the Khyber House said that the district administration was not in a position to conduct the anti-polio campaign in the current law and order situation after a strike call by the district police.

It, however, said the district administration along with the health department and all polio workers was “on a standby” and would conduct the vaccination campaign after the police boycott was over.

Health officials in Khyber district toldDawnthat neither the local administration nor the police had given them any prior intimation about the police’s refusal to provide them with security and that they were in fact taken aback by the last minute move by the police personnel.

Police personnel demand service structure, right to pension

They said that owing to the detection of an environmental sample of polio virus in the suburbs of Peshawar, they had planned to conduct special fractional injectable polio vaccination (fIPV) in order to boost the immunity of children in Khyber tribal district.

The officials said it was all set for the start of the anti-polio campaign on Monday as they had imparted necessary training to vaccinators besides dispatching vaccines to the targeted areas.

“Under the standard operating procedure for the holding of any [vaccination] campaign, we cannot send our teams for vaccination unless we are ensured foolproof security, so the teams have been stopped from vaccination [duty] until the issue is resolved,” an official told Dawn.

Meanwhile, the police officials, who requested anonymity, insisted that they waited for a long time to get their ‘just’ and genuine demands met by authorities and that they had announced the boycott of the polio campaign only after losing all hopes.

They said that the police department and the provincial government had yet to recognise them as a regular police force despite their conversion from Khasadar to police soon after the merger of the erstwhile Fata with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The officials said that they awaited a proper service structure and right to pension like police officials of the rest of the province despite a lapse of over four years.

They said that the police in Khyber tribal district was exposed to many threats and challenges, but the police department had yet to equip them with modern weapons and other necessary equipment to fight and tackle terrorism besides checking crimes.

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2023