Bhubaneswar: Following a surge in coronavirus cases among the cops, the police stations in the city have placed complaint boxes at the entrances in order to avoid unnecessary contacts with complainants.
As many as 700 officials of Odisha Police have already been tested positive for the virus while many have succumbed to the disease. Recently, nine officials of Capital police station, eight of Nayapalli PS and one at GRP police station were tested positive for the virus. Similarly, the residents of slums in the city that have been witnessing a northward trend in Covid positive cases usually throng to the nearby police stations even over petty issues. To avoid this, complaint boxes were installed in front of the police stations.
However, the complainants are showing little interest in submitting their complaints through the complaint boxes hanged outside the police stations barring road accidents, minor altercations or other petty issues. Most of the police stations installed these boxes after DGP Abhay directed the DCP, SDPO and SP offices to do the same July 27.
Sources revealed that around 22 complaints have been dropped in the compliant box at Mancheswar police station, 50 at Sahid Nagar 32 at Nayapalli, 23 at Kharavela Nagar, 10 at Mahila PS and 28 at Chandrasekharpur, 20 at Infocity, 31 at Laxmisagar, 60 in Khandagiri, 24 in Tamando, 38 in Badagada, 27 in Lingaraj, 26 in Airfield 18 in Airport, 28 in Balipatna, 29 in Balianta and 17 in Chandaka police station.
Meanwhile, none of the police stations in the city has publicised its CUG (closed user group) mobile numbers, email addresses, CUG numbers of IICs as instructed by the DGP in his advisory recently. On the contrary, the landlines in many police stations are not working properly for long. That apart, the IICs of police stations do not have official social media accounts to post the contact details, forcing the people to visits the police stations. Similarly, the complainants are skeptical about police response to their applications dropped in the compliant boxes. Several complainants were found assembling near the police stations everyday putting the lives of the police officials at risk. An inspector in-charge, on condition of anonymity, revealed that they are collecting the complaints from the boxes in the evening every day. They are also trying to resolve the petty issues over phone while asking others to come to the police station.
DCP Umashankar Dash said that the submission of complaints in boxes has not been made mandatory.
