West Bengal police has introduced a community policing scheme for imparting self-defence training for school girls. Sukanya project was initiated in Kolkata Police following Honourable Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s decision to empower girl children through various manners. West Bengal Police launched the project in Bidhan nagar and they will soon spread the project in different other districts of Bengal.
The project has been designed in a manner so that the grownup girl children would get confidence to save themselves from violence and unforeseen sexual attack in any odd situation. The reason to extend such unarmed self defense training in the districts is to instill self-confidence among the girl students who will feel themselves empowered once they undergo such training.
The training will include Karate, Taekwondo, Jujitsu, etc. and trainers from the same locality will train the girl students of high schools. The project was actually designed to prevent sexual harassment, eve teasing and trafficking of girl child. Commissionerates were directed to identify girl’s schools where this scheme was to be introduced. The authorities of 115 girl’s schools expressed interest in launching the Sukanya scheme in their respective schools. However, 50 schools were identified on priority basis for their location in vulnerable areas.
Swayangsiddha – a scheme of South 24 Parganas District Police to prevent girl trafficking will be modeled and implemented in North 24 Parganas, Nadia, Murshidabad and Howrah as these districts also face the menace of girl trafficking. Police has already taken up sensitisation programmes to prevent girl trafficking. Apart from girl’s schools, anti- trafficking campaigns have been launched at different public places like railway station and bus terminus. Introduction of Sukany ascheme in the state including Commssionerate areas and extension of Swayangsiddha scheme in four other districts in South Bengal will be reflected in the website of West Bengal Police.
The police-public relationship have improved substantially following launching of the community policing initiatives in different places in the state by offering various facilities and that overall crime rate has also fallen particularly in those areas where such work was initiated.
Community Policing in the Jungle Mahal areas has yielded positive results. The state government has introduced several schemes in the region to help people in a number of ways by providing rice at the subsidised rate. The govt organized medical camps, launched a job oriented training programme, supplied books, constructed libraries and widened the information channel by besides supplying sarees, dress materials, utensils and other household items. Such steps helped the police to remove people’s apprehensions and made them feel at home with police personnel. These moves have also helped police to get advance information on many matters, which had helped them to tackle law and order issues more effectively from those sensitive areas.
Not only in food, education and medicine the state government has taken steps to help promote Sports in the Jungle Mahal areas to make the younger generation happy to utilise their pastime properly. Jungle Mahal Cup, Sundarbans Cup and the Himal Tarai Dooars Cup for the respective region are organised in each year to keep younger generation enthused and move on with the changing times. These competitions have generated new hopes for many successful players, who have performed well in those sports meet. The state government has been sanctioning Rs one lakh each year for organising sports in rural areas. Lot of prizes is given to those who excel in different sports in the final.
Blood donation camps- Utsargaare organised by every unit of West Bengal Police and medical camps are organised by different units of the force to reach out the people with their community initiatives.
