LAHORE: The Punjab Police has initiated a proposal for promotion of police officials in various ranks starting from the assistant sub-inspector (ASI) to the rank of the superintendent of police (SP) to fill 4,000 vacant slots in all districts of the province.

Similarly, the department has also decided to upgrade all the police service centres of Punjab.

The decisions were made in a meeting chaired by Inspector General of Police Dr Usman Anwar here on Friday.

After the meeting, the IGP said it had been decided to give promotions on 4,000 vacant seats from the ASI to SP rank. Of them, he added, 2,110 ASIs, 1,200 sub-inspectors, 350 inspectors, 100 DSPs and 40 SPs would be promoted to the next ranks on the vacant slots.

Mr Anwar said the promotions on new seats would not put an additional burden on the government’s treasury, rather these promotions would be given on already vacant seats in the system. He said nearly 10,000 employees had already been given promotions in the first phase during the last two months.

The second phase of promotions is about to start from this month, for which he has assigned tasks to the police officers concerned to complete the work.

The IGP said timely promotion was the right of every employee and all senior officers were bound to write the annual confidential reports (ACRs) on time.

About the other initiative, he said it has been proposed to upgrade all the Police Service Centres of the province, making the modern software their main feature.

Under the new system, the citizens would avail facilities of artificial intelligence and the verification of the citizens coming to police Khidmat Marakiz would be done by the data analysis and verification system of the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra).

He further said that modern data analysis software had been activated in all the Police Service Centers where online facilities related to police were being provided to the citizens under one roof. He has issued directions to make all the Police Service Centers operational 24/7 to provide facilities to the citizens.

Meanwhile, a Punjab police spokesperson said the IGP has approved Rs66m for buying new houses for the heirs of Shaheed Constable Muhammad Ramzan of Lahore police and Sub-Inspector Muhammad Hayat Khan of Bhakkar police.

He has also approved Rs2.7m for the assistance of 14 police officials declared ‘Ghazi’ by the Lahore, Rawalpindi and Rahim Yar Khan police.

Furthermore, the spokesperson said, the police chief took notice of the viral video of 15-year-old Asad Ali in which he was being stripped naked in Pakpattan. He said the Pakpattan police arrested all the suspects involved in the incident. They were identified as Mudassar, Zaheer, Ali Haider and Yazman.

A case had been registered against them and further investigations were underway, he added.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2023