KARACHI, April 23: Police have placed FIR forms at all post offices in the city to facilitate the people intending to register police cases.

“We have initiated this procedure to facilitate people and redress their grievances in this regard,” the provincial police chief, Syed Kamal Shah, told Dawn.

He said people could obtain the form and dispatch it, duly filled, to the concerned police station where the case would be registered. The complainant would also be informed about the registration of the case, he added.

“We have introduced this procedure in February and have been receiving a good response,” he said.

Explaining the functional division of the department into two wings — operation and investigation —, he said that the FIRs were being handled by the investigation wing for inquiry by the personnel assigned the task.

Giving facts and figures, Mr Shah revealed that 40 per cent of the the registered cases had been referred to courts since the enforcement of the new police system. He recalled that under the old system, police were not able to spare much time for investigation into the registered cases and the annual average of cases challaned in case had come to hardly 10 per cent.

He was of the view that merely FIR registration could not help bring the crime rate down. He stressed on increasing the percentage of challaned cases to achieve the goal.

About ‘Madadgar 15’ service, he said that efforts were under way to to make it more effective. He urged the government to provide the police with more vehicles so as to enable the department establish additional spots. A greater number of such spots, he contended, might obviously provide the people an easier access to the service in emergencies.

The provincial police chief maintained that the six units presently available to cover the entire city of 14 million population were not sufficient enough to come up to the people’s expectations.

“Our aim is to reach scene of an emergency within three to five minutes after receiving a distress call and for the purpose we require an adequate number of police vans and deploy them at maximum possible spots,” he said.