Minister Naqvi to approach PM over NCCIA staff shortage — Dawn

In Pakistan, Federal Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said he would approach Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif over an acute shortage of staff at the newly established National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA). He told journalists this at the agency’s headquarters in Lahore, Dawn reports.

Thousands of cases per investigator

According to Naqvi, the NCCIA is unable to cope with its workload because of a “serious shortage of investigators” amid a growing number of cybercrime reports. He noted that thousands of cases require consideration, while decisions on some of them must be made within days rather than weeks or months.

The minister gave a hypothetical example: if one investigator were assigned between 3,000 and 4,000 cases, it would be impossible to work effectively. According to him, such cases involve transactions ranging from 10,000 to several million rupees.

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61 employees per province

Naqvi said that in Punjab province, which has a population of about 140 million people, the NCCIA has only 61 employees. He also said that the authorities are developing cooperation with other countries and are in daily contact with embassies on cybercrime-related cases.

Separately, the minister called for a nationwide awareness campaign to protect women and girls from online blackmail. According to him, complaints about the blackmail of girls are among the most common, and in some cases victims had sent personal photographs to other people and were subsequently blackmailed.