Provinces ordered to raise inter-provincial border police force

An elite provincial border police force is to be set up along the confluence of the Sindh-Punjab-Balochistan borders in southern and central Pakistan, where growing lawlessness and sabotage have contributed to a certain amount of unease, a government official said on Tuesday. “The respective provinces have been asked to build up their police forces in the trouble-areas,” Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad on Tuesday. Earlier, a leading national English broadsheet in Pakistan reported that a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali approved, on Monday, a Rs. 600 million (US $10,805,554) budget to enable the recruitment of some 1,500 policemen and high-tech hardware so that the trouble-spot could be policed better. Newly set-up police posts are due to be equipped with rocket-launchers and armoured vehicles, the newspaper said. A key gas pipeline ensuring domestic supply in Pakistan which passes through the Sindh-Punjab-Balochistan confluence has been attacked several times this year alone, either through sabotage or stray rockets from warring tribesmen. In January, a gas pipeline emanating from the Sui gas field in Balochistan was attacked by factions with rockets following a tribal dispute with the government. The Sui region produces 45 percent of the country's total gas supplies, with the field able to produce up to 720 million cubic feet of gas per day. Supplies to the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Punjab were stopped following the attack, leaving millions without any form of fuel for heating or cooking. Many businesses were also forced to close down temporarily. The matter was only resolved after a conference with local tribal leaders was called by the government in order to calm the situation down. In March, the federal government deputed two elite paramilitary units, the Punjab Rangers and the Frontier Constabulary, to guard the section of the pipeline considered to be most under threat, Abdul Rashid Lone, a Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) official told IRIN from Lahore. “I think the current number is around 500 personnel,” Lone said, adding that he could not comment on the new police force under review because he was unaware of the details. But Hayat said the new measures were meant to tackle the overall law-and-order situation and not just to protect the pipeline. “The provincial border police will operate on a wider scale,” he stressed. “The decision to institute a new border police force will cover all law-and-order-related issues. The new force will also cover investigations,” Hayat added.