(MENAFN- Gulf Times) The Sindh provincial government has cancelled nearly 600,000 arms licences and decided to launch another drive for voluntary surrender of illegal weapons across the province, it emerged on Friday.
Officials said the government cancelled the licences of all those arms licence holders who had neither submitted their documents for verification nor had they applied for computerised arms licences since
October 2013.
The home department officials said the apex committee, which executes and oversees on-going targeted operations in the city, was recently informed that 1,057,456 manual licences had been issued in Sindh when the government decided to computerise them.
Since October 1, 2013, the deadline for the surrender of manual arms licences has been extended several times and the last such deadline expired on May 19, 2015, according to the officials.
By then the government had received 462,310 applications seeking computerised arms licences, the officials said, adding the remaining 595,146 licence holders abstained from being featured on the radar.
The apex committee finally decided to cancel the 595,146 manual arms licences, the officials said.
They said 184,750 applications were still pending with the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra), while 272,510 applications were being assessed by the deputy commissioners of various districts. Since the launch of the drive, only 56,891 computerised arms licences have been issued, according to the officials.
They said the provincial cabinet also decided to cancel the permits of all the arms licence holders who had neither submitted their documents for verification nor had they applied for computerised arms licences.
Sources said that all the deputy commissioners were asked by the home department to publish lists of cancelled arms licences.
In its previous half a dozen deweaponisation drives since 2001, the government has seen poor turnouts. The last such drive launched in 2013 fetched a few dozens of illegal weapons submitted by some citizens in Karachi.
"For this very reason, the government has stressed on the notion that the message shall be appropriately devised for maximum compliance," said a senior official while elucidating the future plans.
While launching the previous drive, the Sindh government had imposed a ban on the issuance of arms licences. But later it gave a host of reasons behind the holders' reluctance to hand their illicit arms to the government hoping that the new campaign would finally gather pace.
The officials said they were planning the next campaign on scientific grounds according to which the neighbourhoods and districts would be specified for different strategies.
Karachi's West district, which is notoriously regarded as Karachi's 'Waziristan' because of the presence of most mafias operating in land grabbing, drug pedelling and crime in the district, is believed to have far more illicit weapons than the city's other five districts.
This district would get more attention than others, the sources said. During the last campaign, the Karachi West administration had admitted that they had not received any weapon surrendered by residents. The administration had also sought support of area mosques to encourage people to surrender weapons.
The district administration could not succeed in its effort though it made arrangements for those who did not want to come out of their homes with illegal weapons.
They also publicised phone number of a control room and assistant commissioner office through announcements in mosques where people could call and wait for the officials to take their weapons without any hazard.
The officials said the government was also considering announcing immunity for those who would surrender illegal weapons within a certain deadline.
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