Maharashtra’s female police personnel have been on 8-hour duty shifts since September last year, a move that was introduced by Mumbai CP Pandey when he was the state’s acting director-general of police. The Mumbai Police’s constabulary can shift to a compact 8-hour duty schedule as against the existing 12-hour schedule from May 17, according to an order issued by police commissioner Sanjay Pandey on Wednesday. The new order is applicable to male members of the constabulary.
According to the new order for Mumbai Police personnel of the rank of assistant sub-inspector and below, the subordinate ranks can still opt for a 12-hour shift and take the next 24 hours off. But it will not entitle police officers who go for this option to get any weekly offs. It essentially designed this option for policemen who live more than 50km from the place of posting.
The order added that police personnel over 55 years of age and those suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer will also have the option to select either eight-hour shifts or a 12-hour duty schedule followed by a 24-hour break. But policemen performing office duties at police stations will have to put in 10 hours every day, from 10 am to 8 pm. Besides, they will not give police officers deployed in the motor transport department and on security duties this benefit of reduced work hours and will have to continue to work 12-hours a day, as recommended by the duty committee headed by an additional commissioner of police.
The committee, according to the order, was set up after senior officers noticed positive changes in the efficiency of policewomen after their duty hours were reduced from 12 hours a day to 8 hours a day, and the demand from male members of the constabulary for a less gruelling schedule. The constabulary will, however, have to work for 12 hours a day on 25 days every year – for public functions, religious and other festivals and when there is a law-and-order situation in their respective jurisdiction. To be sure, Mumbai has been looking at reducing duty shifts for overworked police personnel for more than a decade and first introduced the 8-hour duty schedule for the main control room at Crawford Market in 2011.
