LAHORE: The Gujranwala, Sahiwal and Vehari police topped their respective groups by achieving the highest score in the month of December following the assessment evaluated on the basis of the 36 key performance indicators (KPIs), the mechanism introduced by Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz to hold the underperforming police officers accountable and reward those achieving targets.

These three districts remained at the top in their respective groups consecutively for the last three months by showing outstanding performance as per the KPIs.

All the 36 districts of the province were divided into Group-I, Group-II and Group-III by the CM while launching the evaluation mechanism in June last year, aiming at deciding the future posting criteria of the field officers.

According to a report, Gujranwala obtained 79.63 out of 100 marks in October, 81.51 in November and 81.96 in December 2024; Sahiwal 82.70 in October, 81.26 in November and 81.91 in December while Vehari police showed notable performance by obtaining 89.20 marks in December, 86.25 in November and 79.35 in October.

The report highlighted that these three districts improved performance under the command of Gujranwala City Police Officer (CPO) Rana Ayyaz Saleem, the then Sahiwal District Police Officer (DPO) Faisal Shahzad who was recently transferred and posted as Sialkot DPO and Vehari DPO Mansoor Aman.

Multan, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi were part of the Group-I while the Group-II comprised 14 districts and Group-III 17 districts.

The KPIs, which assessed the performance of thefield officers, included the marks of FIRs, crime control efforts, improvement in investigation of cases, action against drug dealers, law and order situation, protection of women and vulnerable groups, complaint handling and accessibility to public, security, public service delivery, special initiatives, etc. Marks were allocated following the assessment made by the senior police officers in the Central Police Office (CPO) Lahore and the Special Branch of the Punjab Police before sending the reports to the CM.

Rawalpindi police showed the worst-ever performance by obtaining lowest marks in its group. On the other hand, the government recently transferred Rawalpindi Operations SSP Kamran Asghar and posted him as Bahawalnagar DPO, contrary to the claims of holding the officers from the under-performing districts accountable.

According to some independent police circles, no action was proposed or initiated against Rawalpindi CPO Syed Khalid Hamdani or the regional police officer (RPO), making the evaluation of the performance of supervisory officers just an eyewash or a futile exercise.

They said the system was being followed actively by the police officers serving as RPOs and DPOs to assess the performance of the station house officers (SHOs), a major criteria set by them for the postings and transfers of the SHOs. Unfortunately, the police officers said, the same was not applicable so far in letter and spirit to decide/judge the transfer and postings ofthe seniorñeld police ofñcers.

In the Group-II, district Jhang was at the last position for having just 66.81 scores.

In the earlier settings, Lahore district was part of the Group-I to judge the performance of the head of the provincial capitol police. However, the government, in consultation with the IGP, separated it from any group for unknown reasons.

In the new arrangements, the government just assessed the performance of the divisional SPs of Lahore.