GUJRAT: Assistant commissioners across Punjab observed strike on Friday in protest against the withdrawal of justice of peace powers from DCs in the Punjab Civil Administration Ordinance 2016 which is likely to be promulgated on Saturday (today).

The administrative offices remained closed on Friday in the province due to the protest by the civil servants.

The civil servants say in the original draft of the ordinance, the deputy commissioners (DCs) were given the powers of justice of peace as envisaged in section 22 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) and general inspections of the offices of provincial government which included police. The original draft had also made DC an important stakeholder in law and order issues.

However, they say, the police officers in Punjab portrayed this ordinance as an encroachment upon their powers and agitated on the pretext that the elected chairmen or mayors should be head of the district instead of DCs and falsely publicized justice of peace as a judicial power.

An assistant commissioner told Dawn that associations of the Pakistan Administrative Services (PAS) and Provincial Management Services (PMS) thought that the provincial government under the pressure of police had scrapped all provisions related to police powers from civil administration ordinance.

“This has made the civil administrators furious as they are asked to implement the government policies and initiatives but police are never readily available, be it anti- encroachment operation, action against spurious drug-makers, anti-adulteration campaign, revenue disputes or any other special law enforcement.” He said the police always delayed the registration of FIRs and never provided required strength for operations.

“If the government is not interested in vesting relevant powers in civil administration, then why are they expected to perform such duties that are purely police dependent?” said another official. “The cry of the day is no responsibility without authority.”

He said the provincial government should make decisions independently and should not succumb to pressure from police which was fast becoming a pressure group due to weakness of the provincial government.

He said the law and order situation in AJK, Gilgit Baltistan and Islamabad was better compared to other provinces due to a viable executive magistracy there.

Additional District Collector of Dera Ghazi Khan in his letter written to the divisional commissioner concerned proposed that the assistant commissioners who were bound to execute the provincial government’s campaigns were of the view that if the government was not ready to give the justice of peace powers to the DCs, then a special police be raised to assist these officials in the execution of government policies regarding the anti-encroachment, anti-adulteration and other such campaigns.

Gujrat DPO Sohail Zafar Chatha commented on his Facebook page that every civil service wanted to protect its structure and domain which was a healthy activity but problem arose when one service wanted powers of another service or when one group wanted to grab more powers falling in the domain of other services.

Published in Dawn December 31st, 2016