KARACHI: Police are increasingly engaging themselves with foreign experts under institutional capacity-building programmes, with Americans teaching bomb disposal techniques to them, Germans making them aware of the latest trends in regular policing and Australians equipping investigators with forensic probe skills, it emerged on Wednesday.

Officials and sources aware of the recent training modules and capacity-building programmes told Dawn that a large number of officials associated with different segments of the Sindh police, most of them posted in Karachi, had attended these courses which would likely to continue for three more months or so.

For the bomb disposal unit, which came under the special branch of the Sindh police, the training was being offered by experts from the US, said an official citing details of the training courses. He said the courses were under way with gaps of a few weeks.

While the bomb disposal unit had a total of 127 personnel in Sindh, the training was being organised only in Karachi where bomb disposal unit officials from other districts were called to receive the training, he added.

He said the trainers included professionals from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and some British nationals who mainly trained the bomb disposal officials in handling of explosive material in different situations.

One of the key areas of training was recognition of the IEDs (improvised explosive devices), said an official, who was part of the recent training progamme held on the outskirts of Karachi. Then there were new techniques to defuse devices. Since the bomb disposal unit of the Sindh police had limited resources and the number of gadgets was low, as well as their technology being old, the use of modern equipments was also part of the training. “We have heard that the equipment will soon be made part of our operations,” he said.

When asked about the institutions, funding and details of arrangements behind the training programme engaging US experts, a senior official said the entire programme was either sponsored by donor agencies or was the result of cooperation between Pakistan and the respective countries.

“The Sindh police are not spending anything on these training programmes,” he said. Even the regular expenses of trainers and foreign experts was being borne by the respective countries or donor agencies, he added.

Under a German government project of Sindh police capacity development, an official said, training manual and courses of the law-enforcement agency were being revised to improve the quality of education and training standards at all police training centres in the province.

The training programme was introduced by the German government agency, GIZ, the official said. The programme included first responder course, investigation course, duty officer or muharrir course, SHO course, traffic enforcement, education and engineering and courses in forensic.

He said that under the same initiative a course on methods of instructions for trainers was also organised at the police training centres of Karachi, Shahdadpur and Larkana.

Since forensic science had emerged as a tool to investigate criminal cases and get authentic results, training of forensic laboratory staff was also being organised with foreign collaboration, said an official. He added that several officers had already been trained by the Australian federal police in this regard.