PESHAWAR, Aug 10: The federal government has circulated a document among the provinces and the Islamabad Capital Territory, outlining its arms control policy and lifting of ban on issuance of new arms licences.

The document, issued by the ministry of interior, has authorised the provinces and the ICT administration to start issuing licences for weapons included in the positive list.

The weapons for which licences could be issued include 12, 14 and 16 bore shot-gun, including the pump action non-automatic guns, revolvers and pistols of all bores and 0.22 bore non-automatic rifles.

Balochistan has already enforced the new arms control policy, while the NWFP Governor, Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, is likely to sign a summary to the effect in the next few days. Sindh and Punjab will follow suit, an official said.

Soon after assuming power in October 1999, the government had imposed a ban on the issuance of arms licences and cancelled all permits issued for all prohibited bore weapons including the Kalashnikov. The NWFP said it had 1.9 million licenced non-prohibited bore weapons before the ban was imposed.

A national arms control policy was launched in June last year which was followed by a massive deweaponisation campaign. However, the Federally Administered Tribal Area was exempted from the campaign.

The new arms control policy effectively restricts the issuance of arms licence to income and agriculture taxpayers, officers of armed forces and civilian officers of BPS 17 and above, foreign diplomats (on the recommendation of Ministry of Foreign Affairs), registered security companies, professionals including doctors, engineers and lawyers and any other organization, group/ individuals with the approval of the interior minister.

Under the policy, the federal government allocated a monthly quota of arms licences to major cities in order to control the proliferation of weapons.

A maximum quota of 40 licences per month has been fixed for Karachi and Lahore, 30 arms licences per month for the cities of Hyderabad, Sukkur, Multan, Faisalabad and Peshawar, and 20 per month for other districts of the country.

The policy states that all new arms licences will be approved by the provincial home secretaries on the recommendations of the District Coordination Officers (DCOs) after proper police verification by the District Police Officers (DPOs). The procedure, it says, will continue for a period of six months. The situation will be reviewed after six months.

This aspect of the arms control policy, however, runs contrary to the spirit of the devolution plan and will invariably cause problems for the people of the far-flung districts who are required to visit their provincial headquarters to collect arms licences.

The licences issued by the provincial governments will be valid for the respective provinces only, whereas the federal interior division will issue licences valid for the entire country. The policy, however, is not clear on the revalidation of the licences valid for the entire country. It states that the licensees will have to purchase their weapons only from such arms dealers whose antecedents have been verified and cleared by the respective home departments.