SIALKOT, Feb 15: There are only 1,500 policemen to check crimes and provide security to Sialkot district's 3.3 million population. This was stated by District Police Officer Usama Mumtaz Raja while talking to newsmen here on Tuesday.

He claimed that despite this very short number of police personnel, the district police remained successful in bringing down the graph of heinous crime during the last three months.

The police smashed 10 inter-district gangs of dacoits and arrested 33 members of these gangs, besides arresting 1,337 proclaimed offenders and 504 court absconders in January. They also recovered the snatched property worth Rs15 million, including seven cars, 28 motorcycles, gold ornaments and electronics from them.

He claimed the police arrested 282 drug pushers and recovered 32kg charas and three kilo opium. They also unearthed 35 distilleries and recovered hundreds of the bottles of wine besides arresting 35 drunkards.

The police also arrested 416 people for keeping illegal arms and recovered three Klashnikovs, 47 rifles, 31 guns, 295 pistols, 28 revolvers, 14 draggers and 2,000 bullets from them.

The DPO said a mutual cooperation between police and public was must for checking the crime and establishing peace in society. Efforts were being made for changing the decades-old police culture, but there would be no visible change in this regard within months. However, there would be some certain changes in police attitude with the passage of time, he said.

He said steps would be taken for restoring public confidence in police besides ensuring early implementation of various police-public friendly policies and proposals.

Pilot census: The Afghans residing in the Sialkot district are cooperating with the special visiting teams of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the government, which continued pilot tests of census of the Afghans on Tuesday. It was the second day of the 10-day programme.

DCO Syed Tahir Raza Naqvi, while talking to newsmen, said the teams had been conducting tests of census procedures to fine-tune the operation in preparation for a full-scale census of Afghans.

The special teams, he said, visited the Afghan clusters in the urban and rural areas and recorded vital information about every Afghan, who arrived and settled here after Dec 1, 1979.

As many as 15,477 Afghans have been residing in some 1,200 clusters in the urban and rural areas. The DCO said the Sialkot district was selected in the Punjab by the Pakistan government and the UNHCR to conduct this pilot project, whose information would serve to develop policies for those Afghans who would remain in Pakistan after the Tripartite Agreement expires in March 2006.

The agreement involves the UNHCR and the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The DCO further said the UN team and the government had agreed that voluntary repatriation of Afghans was the preferred goal under the present agreement. The UNHCR has assisted nearly 2.3 million Afghans in repatriation since 2002 and a further 400,000 are expected to return home this year under the programme.