Police second most trusted institution in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: survey

PTI chairman Imran Khan tweets findings of Jang Geo News poll, saying it is a "great achievement for KP Police Reforms to gain this high level of public trust"

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72% of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa residents say they trust the provincial police force.—File photo

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police force is the second most trusted institution in the province, ranked higher than religious scholars and second only to the armed forces of Pakistan, the results of the nationwide Jang Geo News Poll have revealed.

In the survey, conducted last month in collaboration with Gallup Pakistan and Pulse Consultant, respondents from across the country were asked to how much confidence they have on the overall role of different institutions.

72% of the KP residents interviewed by Pulse Consultant said they trusted the police force, which was second only to the Armed Forces (80%) and even more trusted than religious scholars (68%).

Imran Khan, chairperson of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) which heads the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government, tweeted the findings of the Jang Geo News poll, saying it was a "great achievement for KP Police Reforms to gain this high level of public trust".

Provincial police departments elsewhere in the country were not ranked as high as the KP police force.

In the Pulse Consultant survey, 27% of respondents from Sindh, 41% of respondents from Punjab, and 44% from Balochistan said they trusted the police. 

In both surveys by Gallup Pakistan and Pulse Consultant, an overwhelming majority of respondents (Pulse: 72%, Gallup Pakistan: 82%) said the armed forces of Pakistan were the most trusted institution in the country.

In responses from respondents across Pakistan, religious scholars ranked second with 62%, educational institutions with 57%, courts with 53%, and electronic media at 50%, according to the Gallup Pakistan survey.

Only 26% respondents said they trust politicians, while only 23% said they have confidence in the role of the police force.

Politicians ranked at the lower end of the list in both surveys, with only 22% respondents from the Pulse Consultants survey saying they trust politicians.

The Pulse Consultants survey gave somewhat comparable results to the Gallup survey for other institutions as well, with the Armed Forces getting 72%, clerics 56%, police 42%, print media 37%, judiciary 34%, and electronic media getting 29% approval rating.


Note from Editor/Disclaimer: The Jang-Geo-News poll is carried out regularly on a national level according to internationally recognised principles of scientific polling. Large media houses across the world carry out these surveys to assess the perception and opinions of the public.

In order to make it more balanced and transparent, the Jang-Geo-News poll was carried out in collaboration with two different research agencies—Gallup Pakistan, one of the renowned survey companies in Pakistan, and Pulse Consultant, one of the fastest growing research agencies in the country.

The results represent public opinion computed on the basis of views expressed by anonymous respondents selected randomly and interviewed face-to-face. Such surveys contain a margin of error, and should not be taken as a basis for casting votes.

The combined sample size of the study was more than 6,000 households. Gallup Pakistan carried out the survey from October 10 to November 1 using an error margin of +-2 to 3% at 95% confidence level, while the parallel research by Pulse Consultant was conducted from Oct 8 to Oct 25 with a margin of error of 1.62% at 95% confidence level.

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