Southern States - Kerala

'8-hour duty for police under review'

By Our Staff Reporter

THRISSUR APRIL 7. The Director General of Police (DGP), K.J. Joseph, has said that the proposal to introduce eight-hour duty for the police is under review. The decision will be based on the feedback from the 75 stations where it had been introduced on an experimental basis. Talking to reporters here today, after attending the concluding ceremony of the `State Police Duty Meet', Mr. Joseph said it would be impractical to stick-on to the eight-hour duty system for the police, which have to perform divergent and time-consuming tasks.

Pointing that the eight-hour duty system was introduced in five stations at the beginning, Mr Joseph said the decision then was to review the feedback from these five stations and take a decision whether it to effect it in other stations. But it was implemented in 75 stations eventually without apparently conducting a review.

``Now we are going to review the feedback by a team of seasoned officers at various levels. The IG, Maheshkumar Singla, is heading the review team, and officers up to the level of Dy.SP are members of that review panel, which is expected to submit its report by this month,'' he said.

``The report, which had originally mooted the idea of eight-hour duty contained many suggestions, including increasing the number of personnel, which should have been implemented along with the original idea. But policemen who are arguing for the introduction of the eight-hour system and those who had decided to expand this without a review obviously have not read the report completely,'' the DGP said.

On reports of complaints about the latest transfer policies in the police, the DGP said, "I am not introducing any new reforms, I am only implementing those norms of posting transfer which are there in the service rules. The norms like the one stipulating that police officers should not be working at their home stations or their wives' home stations were introduced to ensure that there would be no bias in the functioning of the police. These norms were not implemented in between on account of one reason or the other. Now, I have reminded the officers that these norms must be implemented during the ensuing transfer periods. There is no going back on this decision.''

Referring to the reported criticism on the decision to ensure that the uniform of the police should be half-sleeved shirts, Mr. Joseph said, "The present uniform of the police was introduced in 1985, and in that order it had been specifically mentioned that policemen should wear half-sleeved shirts as uniform.''

Asked about moves to reduce the level of corruption in the police, the DGP said, "Corruption in the police is a serious issue because it affects the common man. It must therefore be reduced. One way is to increase the cohesion in the police force by strengthening the chain of command, so that the senior police officers would be able to strictly monitor their juniors. Senior police officers must set models for their subordinates through their principled behaviour and austere living."

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