Licenses of incompetent security agencies to be cancelled: recommendation sent to ministry

Multan administration has recommended to the Ministry of Interior and Home Department Punjab to cancel the licenses of several private security agencies for their poor performance in the dangerous terrorism-ridden scenario. Magistrates have been directed to start evaluation of the performance of all the security agencies, and licenses of the negligent organisations will be cancelled in the light of their recommendations, a senior official told on Friday.
At present, a total of 120 private security agencies are operating in Multan and other parts of Punjab .The official said that different measures were being taken in the view of increased threats of terrorist attacks in Islamabad. Unfortunately, the security agencies are making no contribution to deal with this menace, he added.
Further, he said that of the huge crowd of these private establishments, hardly half a dozen agencies were doing their jobs well and as per requirement. The official said the government has received a multitude of complaints that the personnel of the security agencies were untrained and simply run away, if there happens a terrorist attack.
The official also said their guards were not trained to act in case of such incidents. They even dont bother to inform the police and other state agencies, when a terrorist attack occurs, he said. A strict check on the security agencies was one of the decisions that a high level meeting took the other day, he said.
The official further said that provincial home departments were also keeping a vigil on the working of the security agencies and would be moving against the non-performing organisations. The official said that public complaints showed that the security guards were not only ill trained, but were also ill equipped, and were poorly paid. In most cases, he said, these guards are found fatigued and exhausted for different reasons.
There were also complaints submitted to the government that the security agencies paid little or no attention to improve the working conditions of their staff and the overall functioning of their respective organisations, he said.
Furthermore, with the proliferation of the security agencies, the government wanted them to be involved in the fight against the menace of terrorism, he said adding that this would be a contributing factor for the assistance of police and security agencies.
Since private guards were deployed at several places, where police were not, they could play an important role in tackling terrorism and even in nabbing terrorists before their strike, he stated. In addition, there were extremely rare occasions, when any input made by security agencies, proved worthwhile in averting a terrorist attack or dealing with the situation after an incident had taken place, the official added.