KARACHI: Police are set to receive a fleet of more than a dozen foreign-funded vehicles equipped with modern gadgets for its bomb disposal unit, which will make the deadly job ‘easier’ as compared to existing operating procedures, it emerged on Thursday.

Officials and sources privy to the development said the police had been told by the ministry of interior about the delivery of 14 such vehicles through Civil Defence. The vehicles would carry ‘all modern gadgets’ that would help detecting explosive and then defusing them. “The vehicles would be like those the Peshawar police’s bomb disposal unit had received,” said an official citing details of the initiative. “It would have bomb-disposal robots, the investigative kits, metal detectors and obviously those bomb-proof uniform which is normally worn by the officials while doing such jobs.”

While he did not name the country, which funded the vehicles, sources aware of the details said the vehicles were ‘most probably’ being supplied by the US under a programme of cooperation with the the Sindh police to train the law-enforcement agency personnel in line with the growing challenges.

Under the same initiative, several projects were introduced to train the police on modern lines, they said. “But these vehicles or the induction of bomb disposal-related gadgets in Sindh police resources have nothing to do with the government budget or recent announcement of extra funding for Sindh police,” said the official.

“Apart from modern gadgets, the Sindh police have also launched a modern training programme for its officials associated with the bomb disposal unit that would help them in learning and executing the latest techniques.”

The Sindh government allocated Rs48 billion for law and order in its budget for 2013-14. While unveiling the provincial budget 2013-14 in June last year, Sindh chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah had announced recruitment of 20,000 policemen, who would be offered “high quality rigorous training” to turn them into a “strong and professional work force”, during the current financial year.

Apart from regular budget, the Sindh government last month approved ‘additional’ five billion rupees for the police department for the purchase of security ‘assets’ aimed at controlling internal disturbances in Karachi. They included bullet-proof jackets, helmets, heavy machineguns, submachine guns and assault rifles.

He said the recent decision for the recruitment of investigators and prosecutors was part of the same ‘resolve’ of the Sindh government of ‘institutional capacity building.’

The official expressed the hope that with the procurement of modern arms and gadgets for regular police force coupled with foreign-funded capacity- and resource-building of the bomb disposal unit, the Sindh police by the end of this year would become one of the resourceful forces of the four provinces.