KPK police embezzled millions allocated for peace initiatives

Lahore: The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) on Friday said some officials of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police brought a bad name to Pakistan by embezzling funds provided byinternational community to battle terror.

Foreign donors granted millions police for peace initiatives through mediation, reconciliation and de-radicalization which were wasted, said Dr Murtaza Mughal, President PEW.

He said that the Australian Government (AUSAID) sanctioned 250,000 dollars for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to police through The Asia Foundation (TAF).

Police engaged a Just Peace International (JPI), an apparently high sounding name but a low quality street NGO to execute the work but despite spending Rs8 million the results came out to be depressingly zero, he informed.

Dr Murtaza Mughal said that third-party independent evaluation revealed that everything was done on papers only.

All the record presented before the auditors was found fabricated which failed the initiative to reduce crimes and disputes in the target areas thus misappropriating the money of Australiantax-payers.

Subsequently, the JPI was blacklisted and funds were stopped while no action could be initiated against the police officials who enjoyed full backing of the ANP, a worker of JPI said on the condition of anonymity.

Apart from AUSAID, Americans were also disappointed when they paid a cash grant of Rs10 million on request of a top police official for a study on terrorism on a famous research technique of Rapid Assessment.

The project to locate Taliban in the villages and cities for effective operations failed as no study was carried out by any research centre or university and bundles of lies were told to the USAID officials, an insider informed.

Many poor in different areas faced operations as police officials embezzled money which was supposed to be utilised for a peaceful solution of the problem, said Dr Mughal.

A lot of damage to life and property of masses and security forces could have been save if the money earmarked for reconciliation was not siphoned off.