GUJRAT: The Punjab government has asked the management of worship places, educational institutions, commercial and business centers as well as private security companies to get their firearm licenses computerized till May 16 or else ready to face strict legal action under the National Action Plan (NAP).

The home department has issued a notification to deputy commissioners of all districts across Punjab to launch an immediate campaign in this regard.

The Punjab government has already been strictly implementing a ban on the issuance of firearm licenses for many years, but educa-tional institutions, worship places and other vulnerable security establishments have been exempted since the attack on Peshawar`s army public school.

Since the licenses issued to these institutions were not computerized, the authorities have launched a fresh policy of computerizing the manual licenses of these institutions.

Gujrat Deputy Commissioner Muhammad Ali Randhawa said he had issued directions to managements of these institutions in the district to file applications to their nearest branches for the computerization of firearm licenses.

Apart from Nadra offices, the computerized firearm licensing branch located at the Deputy Commissioner office is also receiving applicationsfor the issuance of computerized licenses.

More than 30,000 manual firearm licenses have so far been surrendered to the Gujrat district by holders for the last one-and-a-half years.

According to an estimate of officials of the licensing branch of the DC office, over 100,000 manual licenses of various bores of firearms are being held by the people across the district.

They said once the government issued an order to cancel all manual licenses, the people would rush towards computerized branches for the issuance of fresh licenses.

Since the government has been consistently changing the deadlines in this regard, it has reduced the pace of surrendering manual licenses.