The services of Home Guards would be utilised in Bangalore city for non-policing jobs like traffic and day/night beat due to shortage of police personnel, Home Minister K J George said.
Addressing a press conference, he said Bangalore has 10,000 policemen. As many as 2,900 posts are vacant. Till the new recruits join, the services of Home Guards would be utilised as a ‘stop-gap arrangement’ by paying them a daily allowance (DA) of Rs 300. At present, their DA is Rs 200, he said.
Bangalore City police commissioner Raghavendra H Auradkar said Bangalore is one among six cities in the country which have been selected for mega city police improvement scheme. The other cities are Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata.
The home minister said he has approved the action plan prepared by this department for the implementation of this scheme.
Under the centrally sponsored project, both technology and non-technology aspects of the policing would be developed. The project consists of two components --- technical and non-technical.
The technical component includes surveillance squads and providing multi-functional devices to police personnel. The non-technical component comprises setting up of community police resources centres at each police station, which will be named as ‘Spandana’.
These centres would address issues related to women, senior citizens and children. Besides, the FIR copies would be given to public at their respective police stations. Once it is done, people will not have to come to police headquarters to collect them. Servant verification would also be done by these centres, he noted.
The government has decided to recruit 9,000 police constables in the state. The finance department has already given its clearance for this proposal he said.
“Efforts are being made to increase the strength of police department in tune with the state’s population.” The minister said no recruitment has been done in the last three to four years and this has resulted in the shortage of staff.
Besides this, the State does not have adequate number of training centres for police, he added.
Expansion of Central Prison
The government has also decided to take up expansion of the Parappana Agrahara Central Prison. A final notification for acquisition of 20 acres of adjoining land for the purpose has been issued. George said that a committee has been constituted to work out details such as cost and design. He assured that there is no dearth of funds to take up the work.
Several prisoners have spent more than 14 years in the prison, but have not been released due to absence of government guidelines, he said.
The minister noted that this has delayed the release of prisoners on the grounds of good conduct. New regulations are being framed and they would be sent to the Governor for approval.
“We are planning to release prisoners for good conduct on October 2,” he added.