LAHORE: With nearly 40 of Lahore’s police stations working in rented buildings, the city police authorities have expedited work for the completion of 24 projects to provide relief to the field force.
The construction of new buildings of 12 police stations is among these schemes and two of these are likely to be inaugurated in February.
A senior officer told Dawn that the city police had for the first time got a budget of Rs8 billion for the 2017-18 financial year. Earlier, he said, the budget of the same amount – Rs8 billion – was provided to the Lahore police during eight years from 2008 to 2016.
The Punjab government facilitated the Lahore police with the sole purpose of raising basic infrastructure for the field force. At present, he said, most police stations and offices of the senior officers were not in the own buildings of the Lahore police department.
Only 45 of the total police stations are located in their own buildings of the police department and the others are either in rented buildings owned by government departments or private enterprises. The offices of the senior policemen also were working under makeshift arrangements, he said.
Citing an example, he said, the Lahore CCPO sits in the old building of the Civil Lines police station, the DIG Investigation in the old building of Qila Gujjar Singh, the Cantonment SP in Sarwar Road police station, and the DIG security works in GOR-I.
Almost same is the situation with many other senior police officers especially those of the investigation wing.
Keeping in view the situation, he said, a total of 24 mega schemes were going to be completed in the city on a fast track. The inauguration of a mega project of the Lahore police -- Dolphin Headquarters -- is likely to be held next month.
Similarly, the officer said, the construction of new buildings for 12 other police stations including Gulshan-i-Ravi, Gowalmandi, Chuhng, Faisal Town and Liaquatabad was near completion.
He said the police authorities had hired a new architect to add new features to the buildings of the police stations in the city.
“The PC-I for the 12 mega schemes has been sent to the departments concerned and it will be approved soon,” he claimed.
(Daily Dawn)
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