LAST WEEK, the capital police inducted 29 kin of policemen who had laid down their lives in line of duty as constables by way of helping their devastated families.

That was the most the police department could do for the families of their fallen comrades – apart from allowing them continued stay in the official residence the deceased policemen occupied.

But the government had promised them much more – such as Rs2 million in compensation to the heirs of a policeman who dies in the line of duty – only to forget them. Ironically, the police department instead gets blamed for not passing on the awards announced by Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in January 2010.

Senior police officers feel hurt at such unwarranted accusations but understand the pain that makes the families hurl them.

One of them recently reminded the interior ministry, which controls the Islamabad police, of the request sent to it on January 28, 2010 for a supplementary grant of Rs50.646 million needed to implement the revised compensation package that the prime minister had announced for the families of the fallen and injured policemen.

What to say of the finance ministry releasing the funds, the establishment division has not even notified yet the word given by the country's chief executive on January 2, 2010.

In the 21 months since the balmy but unkept words of the prime minister, Interior Minister Rehman Malik added his own promises to keep the morale of the beleaguered police force of the most protected city of the country high.

Besides the promise of Rs2 million in compensation to the family of a policeman killed in fighting terrorism, encounters, riots or bomb blasts, Rs500,000 were promised to policemen incapacitated in such actions and released from service, and Rs300,000 to those who are injured but still in service.

Additionally, the prime minister ordered the construction of 2,000 apartments for policemen and upgrading of the training school and headquarters of the Islamabad police.

Money needed for all this is beyond the capacity of the police and has to come from the government but has not.

Prime Minister Gilani had announced the welfare package after meeting the families of four Islamabad policemen who were killed in a terrorist attack. An implementation plan that had to be devised within 10 days is hanging fire to this day.

Even a special grant of Rs300,000 that Mr Gilani announced for each widow on the occasion has not been paid.

What the police department could do from its budget to honour the prime minister's orders was to give preference to the kin of fallen policemen in its recruitment plan and pay their families the salary and pension the martyred policeman would have drawn in his lifetime in service.

“Either the busy prime minister forgot the promises he made to the martyrs' families or their implementation was lost in the labyrinth of bureaucracy down below,” said a police officer.

Though the Prime Minister Secretariat did ask the interior ministry to implement the compensation and welfare package, the inaction gives the impression that it was all a publicity stunt.

That unenviable image however did not prevent Interior Minister Rehman Malik continued to make more promises.

In November 2010, he announced a cash award of Rs25,000 to the staff on duty at Secretariat police station during his surprise visit, and Rs100,000 on a similar visit to the Koral police station the next month. None was paid.