Ernakulam rural police to address work stress of officers

Kochi: With the number of suicides among police personnel and complaints related to workplace harassment and pressure are on the rise, Ernakulam Rural police plans to identify police officers who are suffering from mental or physical stress. District police chief has directed the senior officers to create a list of officers who are suffering from any kind of serious illness or mental disturbances, and submit a report soon.

The district police chief will individually talk to each officers to resolve the problems.

“Work-related pressure within the police department is a genuine fact. All personnel in police uniform are human beings with their personal and emotional problems. When these personal and official problems get entangled, only a very few of them are able to manage it properly. Others might be pushed to take extreme steps like suicide. Under my jurisdiction, two such unfortunate incidents happened over the past one month. This should not happen again. After identifying the officials undergoing stress, respective reporting officers will have to prepare a report based on the complaints and submit it to the SP,” said K Karthick, superintendent of police and district police chief (Ernakulam Rural).

Police association authorities also said that they would soon start a campaign to address workplace harassment. “A proper mechanism to address officers’ grievances is inevitable and this should be initiated at state level,” said police officers association general secretary C R Biju.