The State police face the uphill task of ensuring that its “people-friendly policing” programme, Janamaithri, does not turn out to be just another overused law enforcement phrase as they prepare to introduce the ambitious scheme in all station houses on Wednesday.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will launch the project which ideally aims at bringing the public and the police closer to make communities safer.
First launched in select police stations in 2000, the scheme envisages improved police-citizen cooperation through enhanced liaison to prevent crime and promote a sense of security in society.
However, lack of resources and resolve had seen the scheme petering out repeatedly in the past.
Successive governments had tried to revive it with varying degrees of success. Their miscarried efforts had caused the public to cynically dismiss the scheme as a worn-out police jargon that largely remained on paper and little reflected ground reality.
Inordinate delay
It remains a fact that citizens still face inordinate delay in getting themselves heard at police stations if they are not recommended by influential persons.
Station houses continue to be a forbidding place for most. Police emergency response systems are sometimes woefully slow and first responders at control rooms are rarely friendly.
Top government officials who had reviewed the scheme’s workings earlier said its long-term success depended heavily on enhanced police manpower.
Most police stations operated on less than half the required strength. In busy A-category stations, law enforcers often worked themselves into the ground and very few were available for sustained community liaison work that is the corner stone of the Janamaithri scheme. Political meddling in law enforcement has also proved to be the programme’s bane.
Budgetary constraints have hamstrung successive governments from increasing the police manpower to the desired level. Recruitment of sub-inspectors, especially women, has got mired down in legal tangles and red tape.
Much promise
Despite all the inherent challenges, the new scheme rolled out by the State police top brass holds forth much promise to the public.
It promises to give priority to the welfare of senior citizens, women, children and victims of crime The police also aspire to foray into the area of blood, eye and organ donation, but do not detail how.
