LAHORE: The Punjab government has approved the recruitment of 3,565 traffic assistants and constables to address a persistent manpower shortfall in the provincial police force.
According to a government communiqué, the new recruitment was approved at a cabinet meeting chaired by the Chief Minister of Punjab, and is intended to close the gap between the force’s sanctioned strength and the population it is required to police.
The communiqué states that 50 per cent of the approved recruitment will be completed in the first phase, with the remaining 50 per cent carried out in the third quarter of the 2026-27 financial year.
In the first phase, 1,782 constables will be recruited into the General Executive Cadre. The recruitment process for traffic assistants and constables will begin shortly, according to the government document.
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The communiqué explains the arithmetic driving the decision. Under the Police Rules 1934, one police official is allocated for the security of 450 people. The decision to recruit was taken to meet the current requirement for police manpower and to address the shortage of personnel.
That framework dates to the colonial period and has not been meaningfully revised, even as Punjab’s population has multiplied several times over and urban policing has absorbed responsibilities — cybercrime referrals, traffic management on a motorised scale, women’s protection desks, tourism policing — that did not exist when the rules were drafted.
The inclusion of traffic assistants alongside general cadre constables reflects a division of labour that has developed in Punjab’s larger cities. Traffic wardens and assistants operate under the City Traffic Police, with a distinct recruitment, training and deployment structure from the general executive cadre.
The demand on that stream has risen sharply. Lahore alone records hundreds of road crashes in a single 24-hour cycle, and traffic enforcement has expanded into e-challan management, licensing verification and school-hours deployment.
Police recruitment drives in Punjab have historically drawn intense public interest, both for the employment they offer and for the scrutiny that follows the selection process. The province has in recent years moved parts of the recruitment chain to digital platforms and third-party testing services to reduce discretion at the selection stage.
The cabinet’s decision to split the intake across two financial phases also has a fiscal logic. Absorbing 3,565 salaries, pensions and equipment allocations in a single budget cycle would place a significant recurring burden on the provincial exchequer, and staggering the intake spreads that cost while allowing training capacity at police schools to keep pace.
The Punjab Police has not yet announced application dates, eligibility criteria or the district-wise distribution of the posts.
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