LAHORE: The Punjab Enforcement and Regulatory Authority (PERA) has decided to phase out its dependence on deputed police personnel for field operations and replace them, in stages, with its own trained enforcement staff.

Sources familiar with the plan said PERA has been wrestling with three linked problems: reliance on borrowed police manpower, corruption at the field level, and misuse of authority. A fourth, longer-running weakness has also been flagged — a 25-year gap in the effective enforcement of special laws that the authority is now mandated to implement.

Departmental documents reviewed in the decision-making process show a substantial complaints trail against police personnel posted to PERA. Disciplinary action has already been taken in several cases: 1,596 personnel have been issued warnings and 351 have been sent back to their parent department.

Under the plan, deputed police officials will be swapped out gradually for PERA’s own trained staff. A proposal to establish a dedicated PERA training academy — where enforcement personnel would receive specialised instruction before deployment — is also under consideration.

Alongside the manpower shift, PERA is accelerating the rollout of digital monitoring systems so that field operations can be tracked and audited in real time. Two further recommendations have surfaced: restricting PERA’s operations strictly to its legal mandate, and linking the performance of deputy commissioners and chairpersons to PERA’s operational KPIs.

Officials describe the overall objective as sharper operational performance and a stronger, more accountable oversight system — with fewer intermediaries between the authority and the ground.