LAHORE: Police departments in all provinces lack human resources, especially the senior command, making it hard for the understaffed and under-equipped police force to materialise the reforms to provide relief to the masses.

Dawn has learned that followed by Punjab, the three other provinces are facing the shortage of officers of the Police Service of Pakistan (PSPs) in almost all ranks, especially in the rank of BS-19.

A BS-19 police officer is appointed as a district police officer to oversee operational matters of the force. According to the statistics, the small provinces are more vulnerable to this shortage as compared to Sindh and the Punjab province.

As per figures, of the sanctioned posts of BS-19 to BS-22, the four provinces are facing shortage of 130 police officers. Balochistan is short of 41 % PSP officers, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is short of 40% officers, Punjab 38% and Sindh 23%.

According to statistics, Punjab needs 60% of police officers of grade 19 to fill the vacancies to run district police affairs. The KP is short of 52% police officers of this grade, Baluchistan 46% and Sindh 36%.

Due to the shortage of police officers in this grade, the Punjab inspector general of police has to compromise merit in DPOs’ posting. The data shows that of the 93 sanctioned posts of BS-19 in Punjab police, 37 are filled while 56 are vacant.

In the KP, 20 out of 42 sanctioned posts of BS-19 are filled; Balochistan has 22 officers, out of 41, and in Sindh 30 out of 47 sanctioned posts are filled.

The KP is facing the 80 % dearth of BS-21 officers, followed by Balochistan’s 25% and Punjab’s 17% against their sanctioned posts.

Of the five sanctioned posts of BS-21 in KP, only one office is occupied. In Punjab, some posts of BS-21 are occupied by BS-20 officers to meet the shortage of senior police officers. Sindh, however, has the required number of grade 21 officers.

When it comes to grade 20, Balochistan has reported 33% shortage of BS-20 police officers, Sindh 8% and KP 5%.

A senior police officer blamed political interference for the human resource crisis in the department.

He said that many PSP officers awaiting postings in the establishment division were reluctant to get posting due to insecurity and political victimization.

The officer said many police officers had been put on awaiting posting for the last couple of years for their alleged links with the former ruling political party.

These factors have created the shortage of officers in provinces, the police officer said.

Another police officer was against the creation of too many posts of the police officers in senior grades.

He said during the regime of Gen Pervez Musharraf, surplus seats were created for the PSPs and the Pakistan Administrative Service (former DMGs) to accommodate a maximum number of officers.

He said that these two rival groups wanted to retain their monopoly by having a maximum number of officers and the political leaderships for creating unnecessary seats to get hold in the government departments by making appointments of officers of choice.

“This is a vicious circle that is wasting public money and resources and I strongly believed the rationalization in these two groups is the dire need of the time to steer the country out of crisis”, the officer said.

A retired senior police officer blamed lack of effective career planning by the ‘Babus’ in the establishment division and faulty rotation policy between the federation and provinces for the transfer/postings of the police officers.

He said timely encadrement of officers from ranks was not being done; thus depriving better promotion prospects for provincial cadre officers.

Another reason is that the police officers preferred to go to federal departments and avoid hard postings in the provinces, he said.

“I believe the intake is less and the sanctioned strength has not been revised in higher grades and also in lower ones”, another senior police officer commented.

Unless the human resource management is not given to the department itself, he said, the police organizations will always suffer from various issues.

The officer recommended that it should be taken up immediately by the National Police Bureau, adding that the system is not streamlined and fraught with various vagaries of governments.

“There’s no career planning as it is always dictated by the governments, each successive government has a different policy,” the police officer said.

The National Police Bureau should immediately be converted into National Police HQ having the complete record of police officers, he said.

This will help in creating the uniformity of policies and creating a pattern of service needed like that of the Army.

The senior most PSP should be the DG police equivalent to a secretary and answerable to the chief executive, the prime minister, he concluded.

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2020