Senior IPS officer Amitabh Thakur has requested Home Minister Rajnath Singh and UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to ensure eight hours work day and minimum one-day weekly off for policemen. Basing on the study, ‘National Requirement of Manpower for 8-hour Shift in Police Stations’ by Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD), which says that 90 per cent of police officers work for more than eight hours a day and 73 per cent do not get a weekly off even once a month Thakur requested Singh to issue appropriate guidelines to all the State governments to ensure the compliance of the important conclusions of this report.
He requested Akhilesh Yadav to ensure similar provisions in Uttar Pradesh. The IPS officer said that it has been felt for long that long duty hours are adversely affecting policemen’s health, family, social life and also their professional work. But for the first time it has been authoritatively established through an official study and hence the study must be respected. The recommendation of the committee has been implemented in Kerala where police work for 8 hour shift. This change has shown good results in Kerala and thus should be emulated across the country, he said.
The research involved extensive field survey including 12,156 police station staff, 1,003 SHOs and 962 supervisory officers, from ranks ranging from constables to IGPs, in 319 districts in 23 states and two Union Territories. All nine police stations types - metropolitan, urban, urban-rural mixed, rural, crime, traffic, women, tribal and others were covered in the survey and it concluded that nearly 90 per cent of police station staff works for more than eight hours a day. More than 68 per cent of SHOs and over 76 per cent of supervisory officers stated that staff members in police stations were on duty for 11 hours or more per day. 27.7 per cent SHOs and 30.4 per cent supervisory officers reported that their staff worked for more than 14 hours a day. It also found that nearly two-thirds (74 per cent) of police station staff have reported that the current working hours lead to health problems of different kinds for them and were also not conducive for attending to their personal and family needs and social life.