KARACHI-In its response to a letter from the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the Sindh government on Tuesday excused itself from providing security resources for at least three months, citing PTI long march, flood duties, and COVID-19 Pediatric Vaccination Campaign.
The ECP had on October 28 sought a report from the Sindh government regarding the possibility of conduct of local government elections in the Karachi division. “IG police has once again communicated the shortage of the police in Karachi Division as more human resources will be required to conduct the elections as per the scale of deployment of 8 and 4 personnel per most sensitive and sensitive polling stations respectively,” the provincial government told the election body. “Police from other districts is still not available due to flood duties for at least three months,” read the letter.
The provincial government told the ECP that 5,000 police personnel of the Sindh police have been placed at the disposal of IG Islamabad for maintaining the law and order situation amid PTI’s long march. In addition to this, police were also engaged in COVID-19 Pediatric Vaccination comparing and the 11thk International Defense Exhibition and Seminar (IDEAS-2022), said the Sindh government.
A day earlier, the Sindh police told the additional chief secretary that the Karachi Range has envisaged deployment of 37,523 police personnel out of which 17760 police personnel had to be arranged from other units of Sindh police while a reserve of 7150 was planned to be raised from auxiliaries to meet the shortfall as per the scale given by Election commission but presently we can only muster 5012 police personnel from all available resources.
“Police from local resources, however, the enormous shortfall of manpower required for Local Govt Elections phase 2 cannot be met without the deployment of police force from other districts of Sindh (police from other districts of Sindh is unavailable duo to floods for at least 3 months).
However, Karachi police were of the view that 4,995 polling stations (1,307 declared as most sensitive and 3,688 as sensitive) would be established during the upcoming local body elections in the metropolis. A total of 25,208 police officers will be deployed to these polling stations. “Karachi police will be utilising 19763 of its force for election duties. An additional 17,760 police officers will be required to complete the planned deployment,” the additional inspector general of Karachi police told the IG Sindh.