GUJRAT, April 10: The plight of the Gujrat bomb disposal squad can be gauged by the fact that it has only two explosive disposal experts working on daily wages with only five metal detectors at their discretion to provide ‘security shield’ to some 2.6 million souls in the district.

Official sources give out that the two-member squad is overburdened with the safety of the whole district aside from two army cantonments at Kharian and Jalalpur Jattan since 1993.

At a time when the country is in the wave of terrorists’ activities, the district government should take the matter seriously for the public safety but its impartiality is becoming a matter of grave concern for citizens.

The sorry state of affair is that the 13-member department has hired only two experts on daily wages of Rs120 to Rs150, one of them is deputed at the district nazim complex.

“Our department is not equipped with modern gadgets and instruments for defusing the device in case of any emergency. We are performing our duties with only five metal detectors while the minimum price of a metal detector is Rs7,000”, one of the experts said.

“The bomb disposal squad requires four kinds of detectors -- metal detector, mine detector, vapour detector and explosive detector. But we have only metal detectors for the defusing exercises,” said a junior officer, requesting anonymity.

He lamented that experts had no gears, including protective shield, for their safety.

“The ‘Darud Sharif’ that we recite is the only safety measure whenever we are on the bomb disposal mission,” said another employee.

He said the district government, who claimed to have pumped billions of rupees on the uplift in the district, could have spent a fraction of amount on the bomb disposal department for the public safety.

Estimating the need of the hour, the bomb disposal squad in collaboration with the police department has trained 25 police personnel to mitigate the staff shortage, but these men are trained to work only with metal detectors.

The visits of VIPs and ministers are a routine matter in Gujrat, but the district government has only two walk-through security gates, one of them is installed at the district nazim office.

Though the district government has started installing surveillance cameras at a cost of Rs5 million, equipping the department with more experts and gadgets will ensure maximum security for employees and the public.