As Taliban militants attacks intensify day by day, police in various parts of southern Afghanistan have not been paid for weeks, says an official. The efficiency of police and soldiers to fight the insurgency has been undermined by irregular pay and leave, exacerbated by corruption and weak leadership from commanders.
As per the spokesperson for the governor of the Uruzgan province, Dost Mohammad Nayab, reportedly said that he has spoken to the interior ministry time and again about the wage arrears but the responses were dissatisfactory.
“Our police forces haven’t been paid for a month,” said Ghulam Farouq Sangari, police chief in the neighboring province of Zabul. “When we speak with the interior ministry, they just say there are some problems with the system.”
An interior ministry spokesman said there had been problems with salary payments in Uruzgan and the eastern province of Nuristan due to a failure of the transfer system at one large Afghan bank.
“We are now working on finding another way of transferring money to them,” said spokesman Najib Danish.
Although this alone is not the only problem in the region. Another government official said the problem was also caused by concerns in some areas that payrolls were being inflated by non-existent “ghost police” and exacerbated by delays in getting the national budget approved by parliament.
“When that happens, it delays all the payments,” said the official reported Indian Express
