ISLAMABAD: The government in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province has inaugurated a police training center aimed at increasing the personnel training capacity in the militancy-hit province, the US embassy said on Friday.
Donald Blome, the US ambassador to Pakistan, joined the KP police chief, Akhtar Hayat, and other senior officers in the inauguration of the $17.2 million Joint Police Training Center in the Nowshera district, according to the US embassy.
The center is the largest construction project in Pakistan, which was completed by the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) over the last 12 years. It would help train 1,700 personnel at one time.
“This investment will have a lasting positive impact,” Ambassador Blome said at the inauguration. “The strengthening of law enforcement presence and the writ of government in remote and under-governed areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will lead to increased security and prosperity.”
Implemented by the UN Development Program (UNDP), the project included construction of 75 buildings, including an academic block, a health unit, men’s and women’s hostels, and a multi-purpose hall, according to the US embassy.
The US ambassador and the KP police chief also signed an agreement to deliver $3 million in life-saving armored vehicles, bulletproof vests and helmets to the KP police.
Pakistan’s KP province, which borders Afghanistan, has long been infested by militant violence. In January, a suicide bombing killed more than 80 people and injured over 200 others, mostly policemen, at a mosque inside a heavily fortified police compound in Peshawar, one of the major attacks targeting police and security forces in the province this year.
The attacks have increased particularly after the Pakistani Taliban called off a fragile, months-long truce with the central government in Islamabad in November last year. The militant group, which maintains sanctuaries in neighboring Afghanistan, is separate from but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.
