By Aamir Latif

KARACHI, Pakistan

 A provincial government in southern Pakistan has announced it will hire around 2,000 people from the minority Hindu and Christian communities in its police force to protect their temples and churches.

According to Sindh province’s State Minister for Minorities Gayan Chund Israni, the decision was taken in the aftermath of an increase in terrorist attacks on the Christian community in Pakistan and reports of more such attacks on places of worship belonging to minorities.

“The newly-hired officers will be bound to perform security duties at churches, temples and places of worship of other religious minorities for at least the next five years,” Israni said in a statement Wednesday.

If the government plan is implemented, it will be the biggest hiring of such kind for the minorities in the Pakistani security force ever.

Last week, 17 people, including 10 Christians were killed in two suicide blasts outside two churches in Lahore, the country’s second largest city, which sparked countrywide protests and violence. Over 80 Christians were killed in a suicide blast at a church in northwestern Peshawar city in September 2013.

A Christian couple was publicly lynched in Lahore in November 2014 for alleged desecration of the Quran.

Christians and Hindus are two main minorities in Muslim-majority Pakistan who make up to three and two percent respectively.