Islamabad Police to Recruit Over 8,000 Personnel in Phases

Islamabad Capital Police has begun a phased recruitment drive intended to expand its force by more than two-thirds, following government approval of a plan that will bring the department's staffing closer to its long-underfilled sanctioned strength.

The scale of the expansion

The plan calls for 8,046 new personnel across five phases, a 69 percent increase over the force's current numbers. That gap has been real and persistent: Islamabad Capital Police is sanctioned for 11,654 officers but currently has only 9,754 in service, leaving key divisions running well below their intended capacity even as the capital's security demands have grown.

How the phases break down

The first phase alone involves 1,725 new constables and assistant sub-inspectors, distributed across the Operations, Logistics and Security divisions. The remaining phases are weighted toward the areas facing the steepest shortfalls: 2,367 recruits are earmarked for the Special Protection Unit, 1,624 for the Law and Order Division, 790 for Capital Patrol, and 775 for the Counter Terrorism Department.

Where the shortages are worst

The numbers behind those allocations explain the priorities. The Counter Terrorism Department currently has just 341 of its 931 sanctioned positions filled, meaning more than 60 percent of its posts sit vacant. Islamabad Traffic Police is in comparatively better shape, with 591 of 685 sanctioned positions filled. The Special Protection Unit, which is responsible for the security of Chinese nationals working in the capital amid heightened security concerns tied to Pakistan-China projects, currently fields 236 personnel.

A structural change alongside the numbers

Beyond the headcount, the recruitment drive introduces something new to how Islamabad Capital Police organizes its workforce: cadre-wise hiring. Under this system, personnel are recruited directly into a specific division, such as Counter Terrorism or Capital Patrol, and are not later transferred out of it. That is a departure from the more flexible reassignment practices police forces have traditionally used, and it suggests officials want the staffing gains in high-priority divisions like counter-terrorism to actually stick, rather than seeing new recruits absorbed elsewhere in the department over time through routine transfers.

Why this matters for the capital

A police force running at roughly 84 percent of its sanctioned strength, with some specialized units like counter-terrorism running at barely a third, has real operational consequences: longer response times, more strain on existing personnel, and less capacity to run the kind of proactive, specialized policing that counter-terrorism and dignitary protection work requires. Filling those gaps matters not just for headline staffing numbers but for whether the capital's most sensitive security functions can actually operate at the level they're designed for.

A police spokesman confirmed that recruitment under the first phase had already commenced, meaning the plan has moved from approval into active implementation rather than remaining a future commitment. Whether the remaining four phases proceed on a similar timeline will determine how quickly Islamabad closes a staffing gap that has been years in the making.

The cadre-wise structure also means each division's recruitment numbers effectively function as a floor rather than a target that could later be diluted through transfers elsewhere. For a department that has spent years watching specialized units like counter-terrorism run at a third of their sanctioned strength, that kind of built-in permanence may matter as much as the headcount itself.