PESHAWAR: After more than two months of it was handed over to the police of Pakistan’s north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police, the four explosives detecting and defusing robots provided by the British High Commission are yet to be used in any operation, a source said.
The robotic technology was provided to the bomb disposal unit (BDU) on July 20 so that the experts could easily detect and defuse explosives through these devices and with less risk to their lives.
Four high intensity bombs were defused by the BDU during September in Peshawar alone while some more were defused last month.
Dozens of bombs were detected and defused during the last two months across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Also, several people have been killed and many more injured in blasts in different parts of the province during the last almost two months.
The additional inspector general (Ad IG) of the Special Branch, Syed Akhtar Ali Shah, however, said the BDU staff was to undergo intensive training for effectively operating the robots.
“These are to be used according to the situation. The assistant inspector general BDU as an expert would decide about its use,” said Akhtar Ali Shah, who also supervises the BDU operations.
The BDU officials are of the opinion that the robots are worth millions of rupees and operating them through untrained people might harm the devices. They said currently a batch of BDU officials was being trained to learn to operate the robots for safely detecting and defusing explosives.
Internews
