PUBLISHED
August 24, 2025
LAHORE:
Behind every law lies a promise to protect citizens—but when that promise is undermined by weak implementation, the law loses its force. A comprehensive 2023 study in Punjab laid bare this reality, showing that from January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2023, conviction rates under Punjab’s local and special laws remained alarmingly low. Drawing on data from the Punjab Prosecution Department, the study traced prosecution outcomes across laws that directly shape daily life, from food safety and price control to child labour and epidemic prevention. The results revealed a troubling enforcement gap:
According to the study, the conviction record under Punjab’s local and special laws paints a mixed picture of enforcement: under the Price Control Laws, 2,297 cases were prosecuted but only 13 percent ended in conviction; for Weights and Measures, 17,700 prosecutions translated into a conviction rate of just 10 percent; Food Adulteration and Safety Laws saw 2,494 prosecutions with the same 13 percent conviction rate; the Child Labour at Brick Kilns Act, 2016, brought 1,891 cases forward but achieved only a 10 percent conviction rate; and the Control of Dengue Act, 2011, with 13,665 prosecutions, resulted in a mere 7 percent conviction rate.
These laws are not abstract regulations; they directly touch the everyday lives of Pakistani citizens. Price control ensures that basic commodities remain affordable, weights and measures protect buyers from fraud, food safety laws guard public health, child labour prohibitions defend society’s most vulnerable, and dengue control saves lives during seasonal epidemics. When prosecutions under such laws are weak or conviction rates remain dismally low, the result is not just a statistic but a gap in public protection.
Poor prosecution often translates into poor enforcement, which in turn weakens regulation, leaving citizens exposed to exploitation, unsafe conditions, and preventable health risks. In essence, the effectiveness of these laws depends not merely on their existence but on their consistent and credible enforcement through strong legal action.
For years, agencies in Punjab struggled with the effective enforcement of key provincial laws — particularly those related to price control, anti-hoarding, the removal of encroachments, and the prevention of public nuisance. While these issues directly impacted the everyday lives of citizens, there was a glaring gap in the institutional framework: there simply was no specialised agency tasked with ensuring these laws were actually implemented on the ground.
Instead, what existed was a fragmented, ad-hoc system. Enforcement responsibilities were scattered across various departments — police, local government units, revenue boards, food departments — none of which had dedicated personnel or a singular mandate to focus on enforcement. Staff were assigned tasks they were not trained, or too busy, doing someone else’s job, or not incentivised to perform, and enforcement became more of an occasional fire-fighting exercise than a sustained, structured effort.
This fragmented approach led to serious consequences, especially during times of crisis. Despite laws such as the Price Control and Prevention of Profiteering and Hoarding Act, 1977, or the Punjab Prevention of Hoarding Act, 2020, local governments lacked the necessary capacity to act decisively. With no dedicated monitoring teams or clear enforcement authority, hoarders operated with relative impunity, and citizens bore the brunt of skyrocketing prices.
One of the most entrenched challenges was the issue of administrative overlaps and jurisdictional ambiguity among government departments. Traditionally, various departments were tasked with implementing specific components of regulatory laws: The Revenue Department manage state land records; Local Government bodies are responsible for municipal functions including enforcement of building codes and street encroachments; Environment Protection Agencies dealt with industrial waste or noise pollution; and Police or district administrations acted as enforcement support.
However, there was no designated “lead authority” to take charge of enforcement or to coordinate multi-agency operations when a violation spanned across jurisdictions. This often resulted in bureaucratic buck-passing, delays, and inaction.
Consider the recurring problem of illegal encroachments on state land — an issue that costs the province billions in lost public assets. Despite the existence of laws and court orders, these cases frequently stalled because no single agency took responsibility. The Revenue Department claimed it had no enforcement wing. The Local Government argued that the land doesn’t fall under its administrative boundaries. Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies awaited directions that never come. Months, even years, pass without action, and the encroachments deepened.
In the end, what should have been a straightforward regulatory action became an administrative deadlock, where the law existed, the violation was visible, but the response was absent. It was against this backdrop of weak prosecutions, fragmented enforcement, and institutional paralysis that the idea of a single, empowered regulatory authority took shape.
The Punjab government recognised that laws alone could not safeguard citizens if no agency carried the responsibility — or possessed the capacity — to enforce them effectively. What Punjab needed was not another statute but a unifying force: a body that could cut through departmental overlaps, hold violators accountable in real time, and restore public confidence in the rule of law.
This led to the creation of the Punjab Enforcement and Regulation Authority (PERA), designed as the province’s dedicated enforcement arm to transform scattered, half-hearted efforts into a coordinated and credible system of regulation.
The Punjab Enforcement and Regulation Act, 2024 (PERA) was designed precisely to break through this bureaucratic stalemate by introducing a singular, province-wide enforcement authority with clear jurisdiction and operational autonomy. PERA assigns itself as the primary enforcement arm for provincial regulatory laws. Unlike previous systems where departments operated in silos, PERA acts as a unifying enforcement command.
PERA does not aim to replace existing laws. Instead, it serves as their long-missing enforcement arm. Whether it’s the Punjab Local Government Act, the Punjab Anti-Encroachment Act, or the Punjab Environmental Protection Act, PERA provides the boots on the ground to ensure these laws are enforced uniformly and rigorously.
In essence, the PERA Act institutionalises enforcement—transforming what used to be a reactive, low-priority task into a structured, professional, and high-impact function of governance. It closes a longstanding gap in provincial law enforcement by shifting from a “recommend and request” model to a “regulate and enforce” system.
One of the core elements of PERA is the establishment of a centralised authority to manage and implement special laws. By consolidating regulatory powers under a single framework, PERA aims to eliminate the inefficiencies and overlap that were prevalent under the old system. This centralisation is expected to ensure that all regulatory agencies work in close collaboration, which will result in more effective enforcement and the avoidance of bureaucratic delays.
Some critics have argued that instead of creating a new department, the government should simply have strengthened existing ones. At first glance this sounds reasonable, and I myself am a long standing supporter of this argument. However, in this case, in practice it would have meant attempting to reform four or five different departments simultaneously — police, revenue, local government, food, and environment — and then amending, modifying, and harmonising their respective laws.
Each of these determents’ statutes carry their own procedures, definitions, and jurisdictional mandates, many of which overlap or even contradict one another. Strengthening them in isolation would only have risked creating a patchwork of competing authorities, each jealously guarding its domain while leaving the citizen no clearer on who was actually responsible for enforcement.
Even if the legal frameworks were painstakingly harmonised, enforcement would still have required “borrowing” capacity from the police to provide legality and security for field actions. This reliance would have reintroduced the same bottlenecks that crippled enforcement in the past, since the police are already overstretched with criminal investigations, law-and-order duties, and counterterrorism responsibilities.
Expecting them to also carry the burden of specialised regulatory enforcement would have been unrealistic and unsustainable. By contrast, unifying these functions under a single authority with its own dedicated enforcement force offered a clean, viable solution — eliminating turf wars, reducing delays, and ensuring that the protection promised by law could finally be delivered in practice.
Of course, PERA would have to live up to its name to earn a reputation. That requires consistency in action, professionalism in its officers, transparent processes that build public trust, and above all the political will to shield it from inertia or interference. Yet these are not unique to PERA — they are the fundamental conditions for the efficient running of any institution. This can go either way: no matter how well a department is designed on paper, if it is run badly it will deteriorate; conversely, effective and judicious administration can often revive even the most inert of institutions. What ultimately matters is implementation in its correct sense — an authority that not only exists in law but delivers in practice.
What was urgently needed in Punjab’s context, especially in matters like encroachments and the removal of illegal occupation of land, was a centralizing authority empowered to act decisively under its own mandate rather than constantly looking around for support from fragmented agencies. PERA was created to fill precisely this void, and it stands as both a necessity and a corrective institution designed to ensure that laws meant to protect the public no longer remain empty promises but with the hope of becoming enforceable realities.
Manzar Zaidi is a security consultant and academic
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the author
