Collect feedback from complainants, says DGP

Thiruvananthapuram: In a welcome move, the police department will soon introduce a system through which people can give their feedback to senior police officers on the action taken by police based on their complaints. State police chief Loknath Behera has directed all district police chiefs to randomly chose 10 people everyday from among those who file complaints before local police stations under their jurisdiction and speak to them directly over the phone. This move is expected to increase efficiency of the local police when dealing with case. It is also expected to improve the behaviour of policemen towards complainants as it would allow the latter a chance to share any bitter experience they had while visiting police stations.
In a statement issued on Sunday, Behera said that all district police chiefs must randomly choose 10 complainants from their limits and speak to them. Similarly, the deputy inspectors general in charge of ranges and inspectors generals in charge of zones must also call 10 complainants every day. Behera and the additional director general of police (Law and Order) will also be doing the same. Henceforth, people are requested to provide their phone number too along with the complainant in order to effectively implement this system. The new system will come into effect as the state government will declare police stations as service delivery centres.
The DGP said that thousands of complaints of various nature are received at police stations across the state every day. Efforts are on to digitize details of these complaints following the lines of Crime and Criminal Tracking Network in which digital records of active cases are made available to all police stations. Once the system of real-time digitization of complaints is realized, it will be easy for senior officers to accesss these datas on their fingertips and contact the complainants. Collecting feedbacks from the complainants on a daily basis will help the department assess the quality of services provided through police stations and also introduce necessary changes in their functions if needed, Behera said.