LAHORE, July 18: In order to move towards deweaponisation in an organised manner, the Punjab government is launching a pilot project of issuing computerised arms’ licences in four cities of the province from Aug 1.
The system would be extended to the entire province from March 1 next year, senior home department officials informed Dawn here on Wednesday.
Initially, the pilot project would be launched in Lahore, Sialkot, Layyah and Multan, they said, adding that the PC-I of the plan had already been approved by the authorities concerned.
The officials said all arms’ dealers would also be linked to the system to put sale of even a single bullet on record. Initially, around 700 of them would be linked up with the computer network in the four cities.
It would be just like the system being used for issuing computerised driving licences, national identity cards and passports.
Applicants would have to appear personally before the officials concerned in the offices of the DCOs for filling the computerised forms and a picture. Their antecedents would be verified from the NADRA database.
The home department would also have the same system through which it would also issue the licences. The system would be linked to a central control room in the department where data from all the districts would be stored and maintained at five different databases for eliminating any chance of tampering.
Similarly, all the arms’ dealers would have to feed every sale and the particulars of the buyer into the computer system to be linked with the central control room in the home department. This would help the authorities ensure that arms and ammunition were being sold only to authorised people.
The officials said the system had been evolved in view of the loopholes in the existing practice under which unscrupulous elements in the government were issuing bogus arms’ licences to undesirable people.
“Despite its efforts the government has not been able to stop the illegal use of gun even through official quarters. And the new system will help achieve the target to a great extent,” they said.