11 May,2016 11:33 PM IST | | A Correspondent
Mumbai police has started an 8-hour duty system on experiment basis at one of the 94-police stations in the city
Taking a serious note of the long duty hours, work pressures and various other issues pertaining to the physical and mental well being of policemen in the lower rungs, Mumbai police have started an 8-hour duty system on experiment basis at one of the 94-police stations in the city.
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It's not uncommon to see cops sleeping at the railway platform; after a hard day at work, many are simply too tired to make the long journey home. File pic
"Considering the several deaths of police officers, untimely duty hours, work pressure, we have just started with eight-hour duty shifts for the lower and middle rung police personnel on an experiment basis at Deonar police station," said Dattatray Padsalgikar, Commissioner of Police, Mumbai, on Wednesday.
"The experiment will be completed in five phases in the city. The first phase has started and the next two phases will be completed in next month," said Padsalgikar, adding that after the completion of the first two phases a review will be conducted.
Deonar police station was chosen for the experiment as a group of policemen who had approached the authorities with the idea included many cops from this police station.
The group also includes constable Ravindra Patil from Deonar police station, who had written a 73-page letter to the CP explaining the seriousness of the issue.
Apart from the 8-hour duty experiment, the Police Commissioner also spoke about city police's digital approach to their day-to-day functioning.
"From June 1, Mumbai police will adopt a digital approach in a bid to cut down on paperwork," Padsalgikar said.
"From the day of joining Mumbai police as commissioner it was my priority to digitalize the work and promote paperless communication," he said, adding that hi-speed internet, wifis and hi-tech connectivity will be installed to execute the initiative.
The initiative mainly includes digitalization of the police notice, which is printed and sent to all the 94 police stations, various other police departments manually. From June 1 it will get uploaded online, and police stations will have a benefit of going through the entire notice and download or take print outs of only the materials, which is useful for them.
The CP also said that he intends to create a data bank of all the officers in the city's police force for the internal administration work of police. They administration can then access the bio-profile of every officer with just a click, he added.
Padsalgikar said, "The project will be started soon as the data collection of the officers is under process. The data will mention their service record, their leaves and also their health."
The top cop also said that upgrading lockups in the police stations will also be completed soon to prevent any untoward incident happened with any accused.
