Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has said that only progressive, proactive, transparent and effective policies can cater to the needs of the people and can fulfil the requirements of the situation.
He further said that the policies should be such that they provide maximum benefit to the law-abiding citizens and the taxpayers.
This he said while chairing a high level meeting at Ministry of Interior today that was especially convened to deliberate on fine-tuning and refining important existing policies vis-à-vis Exit Control List (ECL), granting permission for bullet-proofing of the vehicles, regulating security companies and grant of arms licenses.
At the outset of the meeting, the interior minister shared his observations and put forth his ideas on these important areas. The minister then constituted four committees, each to be headed by a senior officer of the rank of additional secretary, to further deliberate and build upon those ideas.
The committees are required to present their proposals within seven days.
On the ECL, the minister observed that it was quite unfortunate that in past the list was grossly and blatantly misused and names were entered or removed at personal whims and wishes. He said that it was regrettable that no heed was paid to these anomalies nor was any attention paid to correct the faults in the system.
The minister said that there was a need for putting in place a proper system for making entries into ECL with clearly defined parameters and levels to recommend entries into the ECL.
Discussing bulletproofing of the vehicles, the minister underscored the need for devising a mechanism to ascertain the need for grant of such permission to any person. He said that there is a need to make an assessment committee within the ministry that could scrutinise and analyse such requests without referring it to the intelligence agencies in the first instance.
The minister said that it was quite surprising to note that even those people who hardly pay any taxes apply for this facility, which besides having exorbitant fuel consumption costs worth millions of rupees. The minister said that only those citizens should enjoy the facility since they are regular taxpayers and have genuine security concerns. We need to discourage those elements who use bulletproof vehicles as status symbols, said the minister. He said that there should be a centralised office at the federal level to maintain record of all the bulletproof vehicles and the record should be instantly updated in case of change of the ownership.
On regulating security companies providing security services to the people, the minister said that there is an urgent need to review the services that the security companies are providing to their clients.
The minister said that being a license holder it should be obligatory for a security company to have a work force, which has the necessary skills and adequate training to perform their security functions.
The minister said that the policy should also focus on making it mandatory for the security companies to look after the welfare of their employees and their families in case an employee is injured or loses his life during his duty. He said that there should be a co-relation with what these firms earn and the compensation that they pay to their employees.
The policy may bind the firms to provide mandatory insurance to their employees, the minister proposed.
Discussing existing policy on grant of arms licensing, the minister said that it was our sincere effort to introduce a system that benefits all. He said that though the provinces are authorised to grant arms licenses but it was quite anomalous to note that in Punjab and at the Federal level, there is a ban on arms licenses while the same were being granted in other provinces.
The minister stressed upon the need for early re-validation of the existing arms licenses and tasked the committee to come up with workable proposal as to how to expedite the process of re-validation of existing arms licenses. He reemphasised upon the need for maximum facilitation of the taxpayers.
The minister also advised the committee to deliberate as to how an effective check on the number of the licenses to be issued can be maintained. He further said that it was equally important was to chalk out a mechanism for regulating arms dealers and their businesses in the country.
The meeting was attended among others by secretary ministry of interior, additional secretaries of the ministry, NACTA officials, commissioner Islamabad and senior officials of NADRA and other concerned departments.
