To overcome the acute shortage of wardens in Haryana jails, the State Government has decided to deploy additional 400 ex-Army men and paramilitary personnel as wardens on year long contracts.
The recruitment of former soldiers and paramilitary personnel has been started. No written examination and a physical test would be conducted for recruitment of these volunteers. The selection would be made through an interview by a board headed by District Superintendent of Police. After this interview process, the Gurugram jail authority would expect to have 80 wardens.
Those aged between 25 and 50 years and have not been removed from service due to indiscipline, misconduct or medical problems will be eligible.
These former soldiers will be paid a monthly honorarium of Rs 14,000, which would be credited directly to their bank accounts, resident facilities in jail premises and will get life insurance worth Rs 10 lakh.
At the time of recruitment, they would be given a one-time uniform allowance of Rs 3,000 for two sets of uniform.
"The deployment of the Haryana Police personnel in the jail are in pipeline as of now we would deploy these volunteers after an interview process and it will not take too much time to appoint them as wardens," said Director General of Police (DGP), Haryana, BS Sandhu.
At present district, jails are facing a huge shortage of wardens. The sanctioned post of wardens in Gurugram Bhondsi jail is 251 and currently, only 150 wardens are posted.
"The process of appointing jail wardens in Haryana police normally takes around one and a half years because they need proper training and other formalities which cannot be completed instantly and we cannot risk the jail security. But these ex-soldiers are already trained they need very little additional training. So the process will be shorter in their case," the DGP said.
According to police sources, the department is strictly monitoring the activities of jail wardens because around 369 mobile phones have been recovered from inmates of Bhondsi jail over the last five years. Around 60 to 70 phones are recovered on an average from the jail premises every year.