KARACHI: The city administration and law enforcers have decided to seal only the areas affected by coronavirus instead of sealing whole union committees (UCs), it emerged on Monday.

Apparently, the decision was taken due to constraints of manpower required to seal off entire UCs.

Karachi Police Chief Ghulam Nabi Memon told Dawn that the law enforcers had sealed 11 UCs of district East as per the orders of the local administration because of the presence of a number of coronavirus-positive patients.

“Sealing [an entire neighbourhood] is a different concept than the lockdown,” he said.

He said that the law enforcement agencies were supposed to implement a stricter ban on movement of people while sealing off certain localities.

Police arrest 291 across Sindh for violation of lockdown

“We have not made any arrests so far,” he said, adding: “We are trying to grapple with the direction of the government to impose sealing of UCs.”

“There should have been proper consultation and we should have been allowed some time to plan and gather requisite resources including human resources,” he observed.

Moreover, instead of expecting police to seal a whole UC “we should have been asked to seal only those neighbourhoods where incidence of coronavirus infection was on the rise,” he said.

The city police chief disclosed that the police and Rangers in a recent meeting with Karachi Commissioner Iftikhar Shallwani put forward this suggestion and the law enforcement agencies had been asked to seal only the infected areas instead of cordoning off the entire UC.

291 held for lockdown violations

Meanwhile, police on Monday arrested 291 people and registered 73 FIRs against them on charges of violation of Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), hoarding of masks, sanitizers and gloves across the province.

According to a police spokesperson, 119 people were detained in Karachi, 23 in Hyderabad, 42 in Shaheed Benazirabad, 34 in Sukkur and 73 in Larkana.

No arrest was reported from the Mirpurkhas range, the spokesperson said.

Factory sealed in New Karachi

The New Karachi Industrial Area police on Monday conducted a raid on a garment factory, arrested its two supervisors and sealed the industrial unit for violating the lockdown measures imposed by the provincial government to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

According to SSP-Central Arif Aslam Rao, around 125 workers, including 14 females, were working in the factory in violation of Section 144 of the CrPC.

He said that 66 motorbikes were parked outside the factory.

The police registered a case against the held supervisors as well as the factory administration.

Published in Dawn, April 14th, 2020