Police lacks resources
Dr Farrukh Saleem
The writer is an Islamabad-based
freelance columnist
No one has much good to say about our police. Rampant corruption, extremely low credibility, low morale and inefficiency. Why is it that police is good only if you are a Minister or a General?
Everyone, however, has good things to say about our Motorway Police. Incidence of corruption is low, the Motorway Police is polite and the force is efficient. Intriguingly, almost everyone serving the Motorway Police is actually on deputation from the regular police force. Take the same guy out of the regular police and put him into the Motorway Police and there is an immediate transformation; he becomes polite and efficient. Back to his thana duty and there’s an instant adaptation in the opposite direction. What does the Motorway Police offer that the regular thanas don’t? At least three things. First, better pay. Second, reimbursement of operational costs. Third, a better working environment.
Look at how our thanas really operate. An SHO, a hundred constables and some two dozen head constables. All that the government doles out is payroll plus electricity, phone and gas bills. There is absolutely nothing for operational costs, stationery, food, tea or maintenance of the thana building. The official
car gets an allowance of five litres of petrol/diesel while the Eagle motorcycle gets a litre a day. The official car can go as far as 25 kilometres on official petrol/diesel while the motorcycle can do no more than 35 kilometres a day. Cost of every additional kilometre has to be recovered directly from the citizens of Pakistan. Investigating a dacoity costs upwards of Rs50,000 a case and investigating murder cases even higher. The SHO is given no money for any of this.
I had always wondered as to who provides food to the people in the lockup. The government certainly doesn’t. That expense must also be borne by the SHO. Why is it that our thanas never have any paper to write on? The government has no money for that provision either. To meet all these expenses, the SHO is paid a monthly salary of Rs4,500 a month.
There are some 1,250 police stations covering 778,720 square kilometres of Pakistan. Each SHO just to maintain his office must come up with all thana expenses. The thana that I visited had three broken windowpanes which were being replaced by a local businessman. The conclusion being that the federal government and all the four provincial governments almost by design encourage corruption. For the thana, there is no way out but to solicit outside funds.
Once the SHO is underwater then there is no coming back. The SHO then becomes a fish – nay, a whale – taking in tons of water and there is no telling whether he is breathing or drinking. Private greed then takes over everything else and public good is slaughtered day in day out.
In the City of Chicago, police-citizen ratio is 4.1 for every 1,000 citizens. In Pakistan, police-citizen ratio stands at around 2 for every 1,000 Pakistanis. Considering that at times up to half of all police is either posted at mosques, Imambargahs, churches or on VIP duty the affective police-citizen ratio further drops to 1 per 1,000 (especially in Islamabad). We haven’t fought a war in 32 years but we have five soldiers for every 1,000 Pakistanis. On the casualty front, accumulated casualties just at the Karachi Police over the years are actually quite comparable to war casualties during our three wars with India.
In Islamabad, starting March 15 there are military parade rehearsals of all kinds during which almost the entire police hierarchy is deputed to guard our Ukrainian tanks smoking down towards the presidency. Starting March 15, Islamabad hosts a two-week long ‘Robbers Convention’ attended by thieves, burglars, housebreakers and assorted criminals belonging to other sub-specialties. Residents of the Capital City are left to their own devices and defences.
Is the military-led government interested in improving law and order? Are the generals interested in bringing down the incidence of corruption in our police? The formula is simpler than most think. Pay, reimbursing all operational costs to thanas, a better working environment, merit-based recruitment and non interference by MNAs, generals, brigadiers and colonels. The five-component formula would do it. The pay scales at the Motorway Police, for example, are 100% higher, duty hours are shorter, working environment is far superior and they are much better equipped.
IG-Punjab, for instance, gets a uniform allowance of Rs250 a month while commanding more men than do our three Corps Commanders put together. A Pak Army 2nd Lieutenant gets Rs1,250 as kit allowance in addition to disturbance pay, if married, and a batman allowance. Rent free quarters, entertainment allowance, foreign allowance, ration allowance, pension, deferred pay, disturbance pay, conservancy allowance and leave encashment preparatory to retirement are all exempt from taxation if in the hands of personnel of Pakistan Armed Forces.
We end up spending more than Rs100,000 per soldier per year and Rs40,000 per police per year (both excluding equipment). Military Police is well-fed, well-trained, well-equipped with significantly shorter duty hours. Their families have medical coverage with extensive retirement benefits, a roof on their heads and free education for their offspring. Our police have no central mess, no education facilities for their kids, no medical coverage, they are ill-trained, ill-equipped and are used for up to 18 hours a day. Garbage in, garbage out.
There is absolutely no justification for corruption anywhere. To be certain, thana corruption has a certain design to it. Our ministers and our generals don’t allocate funds that a professional law enforcement agency needs. Our ministers and our generals use the police whenever and wherever they need them. The police in turn extract rent from everyone else. All the four provincial governments and the federal government must bear part of the blame.
Thana corruption, at least partly, is based on necessity. Remember, in Syed Zafar Ali Shah vs General Pervez Musharraf, Justice Irshad Hasan Khan, the-then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, validated the assumption of power by General Pervez Musharraf “through unconstitutional means” based on the ‘Doctrine of Necessity’ (PLD 2000 SC 869)."