ISLAMABAD, Nov 22: Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider on Thursday said the government intended to extend Arms Control Act to the tribal areas and ‘B’ areas of Balochistan.

Speaking on the “arms destruction day” at Police Lines, the minister said there would be no exception to anybody in the deweaponization campaign.

Expressing the determination to eliminate illegal arms manufacturing, he said this big source of arms manufacturing could not be ignored.

The government, he added, had already controlled the sale of arms from Darra Adamkhel with the help of the provincial government.

Mr Haider said the Federally Administered Tribal Areas would be brought under a discipline.

He said the government had collected 124,000 weapons of different categories during the campaign against illicit arms. The campaign was being carried in low key and would continue till the elimination of illegal weapons.

He said it had become a status symbol in the past to keep arms. In those years, he said, quotas were allotted to MPAs and MNAs and in the process numerous forged licenses were also issued because the procedure involved no verification.

The minister said that reforms in the Police Act 1981 would be finalized by the year’s end so that the police could emerge as a responsible and people friendly force.

Later, he saw the destruction of illegal weapons and visited various sections of the Forensic Science Laboratory which has been equipped with modern gadgets to track down the culprits.—APP