LAHORE: The Punjab Police Depanment has violated criteria set by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Intedaith Harmony for the nomination of Moavineen-i-Hujjaj (helpers of pilgrims) for Hajj 2015, preferring the administrative staff to the uniformed personnel.

Ministry`s terms of reference say that 95 per cent of nominations will be from uniformed personnel and five percent from non-uniform (within police). It says the personnel should not be less than 25 years and more than 45 years while 30 percent of the helpers who have performed duties in 2014 may be allowed to repeat the mission in 2015 to achieve the best performance and provide quality services to the pilgrims.

The contingent of Moavineen-i-Hujjaj is sent to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to help pilgrims during their stay. The nominees will serve under the administrative control of the Haj director general, Jaddah, and the Moavineen-i-Hujjaj director.

The ministry communicated to the inspector general (IG) to `furnish nominations of 59 personnel from Punjab Police serving in BPS-9 to BPS-17 under your administrative control after strictly observing the enclosed criteria`.

However, the staff of Additional Inspector General Naseemuz Zaman violated the instruction. The additional IG reportedly refused to address the complaint.

Mr Naseem confirmed violations, but added time was too short to address the issue.

`We adopted balloting to select the Moavineen-eHujjaj,` he added.

He said some uniformed men approached him in this particular case to rectify the violation. He said he told the visitors that it was a time taking exercise and might create issues due to the shortage of time.