1,100 ghost police personnel ousted in Uruzgan

TIRINKOT (Pajhwok): The police chief for central Uruzgan province on Saturday said 1,100 ‘ghost police personnel’ have been ousted from job as part of a screening campaign.

Brig. Gen. Wali Jan Sarhadi told a press conference here thousands of afghanis would go to private pockets in the name of those ghost policemen. He didn’t name anyone.

He said the police headquarters were currently registering again the police personnel in order to find out how many existed in capital Tirinkot and districts of the province.

He said of the 1,100 ghost police, 700 belonged to the Afghan National Police (ANP) and the rest 400 to the Afghan Local Police (ALP). The imaginary personnel privileges were received by some people.   

The imaginary personnel number might be higher in Uruzgan, Sarhadi said, adding the exact figures would be obtained once all the police were registered via a biometric system.

He called the 4,500 ANP and ALP personnel in Uruzgan as wrong, saying if that number existed, the province would have never been facing security threats and Taliban wouldn’t have been able to take control of dozens of localities in just two days.

A strong campaign to bring about a drastic deep change in police has been launched to apprehend those benefitted from ghost police’s privileges over the past few years, he added.

Three police, who surrendered 11 weapons to Taliban a few months ago, were detained on Friday and were under interrogation.

sns/ma