FAISALABAD, March 26: The District Bar Association has threatened to launch a protest movement with the help of trade bodies and political parties for pressing the government to establish a Lahore High Court bench in Faisalabad. In a statement here on Saturday, DBA president Saleem Jahangir Chattha said that President Pervez Musharraf and former prime minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali had promised to set up a high court bench in Faisalabad, but no step had so far been taken in this regard. He further said the inordinate delay in this public welfare oriented project was nothing, but a tactic to wind up the matter for good. High court benches, he said, were working in all defunct divisional headquarters of provinces in Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan, but over 10 million population of the defunct Faisalabad division had been ignored.

funds okayed: The Punjab government has approved more police stations and posts in the district to provide better security services to the public.

DPO Muhammad Amin Wains stated this at a police meeting held at Jaranwala tehsil on Friday night, adding that the government had also earmarked huge funds for the betterment of the force.

He said the plan was in its final stage and it would be implemented soon, adding that a separate police station would be established near Khurrianwala to provide security to textile units and the labour working there.

He said efforts were on to provide more motorcycles and four-wheelers to the police officials for patrolling purposes in the district, especially on highways.

The DPO said the police personnel should now become people-friendly and there should be no torture cells.

He warned that the police personnel or officials found involved in patronizing crimes or using delaying tactics in providing help to the people in need, would be kicked out of the department.

Mr Wains claimed the district police, during the last couple of years, had smashed a number of crime gangs and recovered a huge quantity of weapons, besides killing many criminals in ‘encounters’.