The rising rate of violence related to extortion in the provincial capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) has triggered an exodus of businessmen and industrialists who have fled Peshawar to safer grounds and left thousands of people unemployed. Peshawar had 22 reported extortion cases in 2013 and this year’s incidents have more than doubled in the first three months. The actual figure may be much higher because most victims don’t contact police out of fear.
A recent report in this paper quoted a senior official of the K-P Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KPCCI) as saying that, at least, 150 business professionals have shifted their factories to other parts of the country or moved abroad. The largest industrial zone in the province, Hayatabad Industrial Estate (HIE), which houses up to 440 units and employs over 120,000 people, has been attacked several times. The drain of much needed capital in a city that serves as an employment hub for people from other parts of K-P as well as Fata, and subsequent unemployment is, unfortunately, likely to only worsen the security situation in the city as well as the region.
So far, the chief minister and police officials have made unfulfilled promises regarding ‘special committees to address the issue’ or separate police stations within industrial zones reducing the faith of the community in them for protection. When citizens don’t trust those mandated to protect them and criminals act with impunity because they don’t expect to get caught, then therein lays the real problem.
The state needs a two-prong approach to catch the extortionists and re-establish the writ of the state. Firstly, law enforcement agencies need to come up with more effective means of protecting businessman and their enterprises. Secondly, the police and judiciary need to accelerate investigations and convictions of extortion cases. Until extortionists start fearing punishment and industrialists start trusting law enforcement, people will continue buying one-way tickets out of Peshawar.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Pakistan: Extortion in Peshawar
The rising rate of violence related to extortion in the provincial capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) has triggered an exodus of businessmen and industrialists who have fled Peshawar to safer grounds and left thousands of people unemployed. Peshawar had 22 reported extortion cases in 2013 and this year’s incidents have more than doubled in the first three months. The actual figure may be much higher because most victims don’t contact police out of fear.
A recent report in this paper quoted a senior official of the K-P Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KPCCI) as saying that, at least, 150 business professionals have shifted their factories to other parts of the country or moved abroad. The largest industrial zone in the province, Hayatabad Industrial Estate (HIE), which houses up to 440 units and employs over 120,000 people, has been attacked several times. The drain of much needed capital in a city that serves as an employment hub for people from other parts of K-P as well as Fata, and subsequent unemployment is, unfortunately, likely to only worsen the security situation in the city as well as the region.
So far, the chief minister and police officials have made unfulfilled promises regarding ‘special committees to address the issue’ or separate police stations within industrial zones reducing the faith of the community in them for protection. When citizens don’t trust those mandated to protect them and criminals act with impunity because they don’t expect to get caught, then therein lays the real problem.
The state needs a two-prong approach to catch the extortionists and re-establish the writ of the state. Firstly, law enforcement agencies need to come up with more effective means of protecting businessman and their enterprises. Secondly, the police and judiciary need to accelerate investigations and convictions of extortion cases. Until extortionists start fearing punishment and industrialists start trusting law enforcement, people will continue buying one-way tickets out of Peshawar.
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