KHYBER: The Former Khasadar and Levies Force Action Committee locked the offices of the District Police Officer (DPO) and Superintendent of Police (Investigations) on Tuesday, demanding employment regularisation and a proper service structure.

The committee members entered the Shah Kas Police Training Centre around midday and locked the offices of DPO Salim Abbas Kulachi and SP (Investigations) Kamal Hussain from outside. No one stopped them.

Jahangir Khan Afridi, a member of the action committee, told Dawn that the offices would remain closed until all demands were met, and the protest would continue until then.

“Our top demand is the reinstatement of all Khyber police personnel whose services were recently transferred to police departments in other districts of the province,” he said.

The member said that the committee would agree to talks only if those personnel were posted back to Khyber and action was promised on their 22-point charter of demands, signed by both police and security officials soon after the extension of the Police Act to the merged districts.

He said the committee would avoid any confrontation with authorities and would show maximum restraint.

Mr Afridi warned that the entire 35,000-strong police force in all seven tribal districts could refuse to perform their duties if their demands were not met.

There are also unconfirmed reports of backchannel contacts between committee members and senior police officials in Peshawar.

Police officials insisted that they neither denied the protesters their legitimate rights nor were they authorised to meet any of their demands.

They said the police force had never been part of the Fata-KP merger and that the police high-ups weren’t taken on board about how to handle the newly converted tribal police force. The officials said everybody asked them why those issues were not addressed on time without realising they couldn’t do anything about them.

They said they forwarded possible solutions to the issues to authorities for consideration.

Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2024