An opposition member in the provincial assembly (PA) asked Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Friday to either appoint a home minister or himself assume charge of the department instead of dividing it up three ministers.
As the assembly resumed the general debate on law and order in the Punjab, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) MPA Siddique Khan said the various tasks of the Home Department had been divided among Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan, Environment Minister Col (r) Shuja Khanzada and Sharif himself. The division of command created a lot of confusion, he said, especially for police.
He said Sanaullah had been answering questions on law and order, but the minister for environment had been tasked with reforming the police structure and Sharif frequently issued guidelines on how to deal with the law and order situation.
Khan said this had impacted police performance. None of these ministers had accepted responsibility for the failure of law enforcement agencies to maintain law and order on Ashura in Rawalpindi, he said.
“The chief minister must give up the Home Department or end the division of command,” he said. There must be one home minister responsible for maintaining law and order in the Punjab.
“If three home ministers cannot ensure sectarian peace in the province, maybe they shouldn’t be the ones handling the department,” he said. Khan said part of the problem was the politicisation of the police.
He said four station house officers had been appointed to a single police station in his constituency in Taxila and an ASI had been transferred.
This comment led to a thread of grievances, reported by opposition members, regarding injustices by the police in their constituencies.
Concluding the discussion on law and order, Sanaullah said, the government was committed to improving the performance of law enforcement agencies. “We want to make our cities crime free,” he said.
Sanaullah said a programme had been launched in this regard on Friday. In the first phase of the programme, 3,000 surveillance cameras will be installed across the city. They will be monitored at a command and control room. The programme will later be expanded to other districts and tehsils. Surveillance cameras will also be installed at police stations across the province.
Sanaullah said complaints from remote police stations in places like Attock and Rajanpur will then be monitored and more effectively addressed by police high ups in Lahore.
The Punjab Forensic Laboratory will also be made fully functional in the next two years, he said. He said in one year of its operation it had already proved great help.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 7th, 2013.