Mumbai After reducing the working hours of women police personnel from 12 to eight in September, police commissioner Sanjay Pandey decided to implement the eight-hour duty format for all members of the constabulary from Tuesday.
Considering the working conditions in Mumbai, especially the long travel distance between home and the workplace, the top cop had decided to also include the male members of the constabulary in the eight-hour shift.
The constabulary includes police constables, police naik, head constables and assistant sub-inspectors. Mumbai police has a sanctioned strength of 40,622 in the constabulary, but only 33,236 members are working and 7,386 posts are vacant.
A senior IPS officer confirmed that the order was implemented from Tuesday across the city and now all police personnel from constables to ASIs will work for eight hours a day. Policemen above the age of 50 years will also have the option of working 12-hours a day and taking rest for the next 24 hours.
“We closely studied the working conditions of police constables and all other related aspects and then formulated the eight-hours duty format. It will largely benefit those police personnel who travel to their workplace (Mumbai) from far places such as Panvel, Ambernath, Badlapur, etc,” said Vishwas Nangre Patil, joint commissioner of police (Law and Order).
The police administration has excluded 30 days every calendar year from the eight-hour work schedule when the city requires 24-hour police presence for maintaining law and order. These are the days like Ganeshotsav, Navratri, Ambedkar Jayanti, etc.
Besides this, discretionary powers have been given to the additional police commissioners of the five zones who can keep the eight-hour format in abeyance for any five days in the entire year, as per their requirements, to maintain law and order in the region. For this, they would have to take prior permission from the commissioner, the officer added.