PESHAWAR: Country Director Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) Lori J Antolinez has said $3 million would be provided to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police for purchasing bulletproof vests, surveillance equipment and night vision devices.

Speaking to reporters during an online interaction, Ms Antolinez said INL had provided a lot of personal protective gear, armoured vehicles and surveillance equipment to the police.

She said the new support to the KP police was focused in the areas considered the hotspots. “There are five different police stations that we’re looking at reinforcing in southern KP,” she added.

She said that INL had a longstanding relationship with Frontier Corps. “Over the last four decades we have put $1 billion assistance into the programmes that have strengthened law enforcement capacity and the justice sector, and over half of it has been in KP and Balochistan,” she said.

She said they were working with the FC before it was split into FC North and South, and they would continue to support it.

Besides, Ms Antolinez said there was also a lot of investment that went into poppy eradication. “This initiative has probably benefited the most people in KP. The roads we have built have helped about 20,000 households in KP,” she added.

Ms Antolinez said they had also done a lot of infrastructure support of border outposts again working closely with FC to enhance the writ of the government.

She said they were also helping standardise and improve the curriculum that’s used to train the KP police force.

She said $18 million was spent on joint police training centre in Nowshera, where police’s elite force was trained following the merger of Levies force into the KP police.

She said INL had helped build 176 border outposts along the Pak-Afghan border.

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2024