Staff Reporter
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Monday urged the police department to work out a policing plan which must ensure public safety and its foremost principle should be confidence building of the people of the province in police and they must feel secure in presence of the policemen.
He was presiding over Provincial Public Safety & Police Compliant Commission meeting here at CM House. The meeting was attended by all the members, Sharjeel Memon, Imdad Pitafi, Mohammad Ali Aziz, Hasnain Mirza, Shahnaz Begum, Shameem Mumtaz, Advocate Jhamat Mal, Karamat Ali, IG Police Dr Kaleem Imam, PSCM Sajid Jamal Abro, provincial secretaries, Home and Law and others.
The IG Police presented a draft policing plan and briefed the members and provided them its copies so that they study it and give their input.
The Annual policing plan for 2019-20 intends to build upon the successes achieved and consolidate the initiatives taken during last year to promote professional policing in Sindh.
In the plan, a comprehensive and critical approach has been adopted to highlight ground realities that can actually help policy makers understand the real problems and thus contributing towards the up-gradation of the institution. It aims to review why different departments of Police have not brought desired results. It also identifies both operational as well as administrative targets to be achieved during the year and mechanism to secure the set targets while making optimum use of available financial and other resources.
The plan has been drawn to reset, review and revise the goals, objectives and targets to meet future challenges. The first part comprises of an assessment of the preceding year while the second part comprises of objectives of the policing, critical analysis of the financial resources available to the Sindh Police and in the end goals/targets set for the year are elaborated.
The Sindh Police has started numerous initiatives in the preceding year and has successfully consolidated and institutionalized them. Foremost among them was improving service delivery at police station is an important task of police organization. Being the basic unit of Police department, it is of prime importance that public should get positive and satisfactory response from the Police Station.
During the previous year many steps were taken by Ithe police to improve service delivery at police station and changing Thana Culture as core objective like 221 Reporting Rooms have been established, 36 Complaints centers were created.
Finance and welfare branch are vested with the functions of overseeing the financial management, internal auditing, personnel welfare, centralized procurement, resource management, infrastructure development and estate management of Sindh Police.
Sindh Police is allocated the annual budget of Rs. 98 billion, of which Rs 82 billion (84%) is allocated for salary component while Rs16 billion (16%) is available for operational requirements.
The core function of police is to fight crime and register FIRs. The policy of free registration of FIRs was adopted and an unprecedented increase of 23 percent in registration of FIRs was seen. Common masses were encouraged to register FIRs and they showed their trust in police by increasing the FIR registration. The increase in registration of FIRs does not mean that the street crime was increased rather it is on the contrary. There is overall 7 percent reduction in the street crime and this is due to effective crime fighting, street patrolling, busting of gangs and arrest of POs and Absconders.
The Policing Plan highlights not only the goals but also mechanism to achieve that goal and key performance indicators of that goal. In the field of training, the most important goal is to enhance Capacity of trainers on modern lines. The mechanism adopted include MoU with Karachi University to enhance / assist the capacity of trainers on modern lines; more Instructor Development Courses (IDC by GIZ) will be conducted to enhance the capacity of trainers; Training of Trainers (ToT) would be conducted to train more trainers for enhancement of professional skills.
