The Hindu : New Delhi News : Draft of proposed new Police Act provides for setting up of welfare board

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 30, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

Draft of proposed new Police Act provides for setting up of welfare board

Prashant Pandey

To monitor welfare policies for serving personnel, retired men and officers

NEW DELHI: In what could turn out to be a significant piece of legislation assuring the police personnel of adequate career promotion opportunities as well as insurance and other benefits, the draft outline of the proposed new Police Act has made provision for constitution of a Police Welfare Board that would lay down and monitor various welfare policies.

These will pertain to not only the serving personnel but also retired men and officers.

Headed by an Inspector-General, the Board would be in the office of the Director-General of Police (DGP). The DGP would nominate members who would represent all the police ranks. He may also nominate other members but only in an advisory capacity.

The Board would be responsible for ensuring heath care, including post-retirement health care, as well as post-retirement or post-death financial security for the police personnel.

It would also look after post-retirement housing, education and career counselling of family members of serving personnel. It would also be looking after training of family members of the police personnel in small-scale manufacturing and other entrepreneurial works.

To ensure this, the Welfare Board would interact with various Government departments, public sector undertakings and other establishments to facilitate gainful employment for the retired police officers and for family members of police officers who lose their lives in the line of duty.

To ensure that the Board has adequate funds for discharging its responsibilities, the draft Act proposes that the State would contribute one component of the corpus as outright grant. The other component would comprise a matching grant by the State to the contribution made by the police personnel towards the welfare fund.

The proposed draft makes further provision for insurance coverage, risk allowance and health care for the police personnel. According to the proposed draft, the State Government shall provide adequate insurance coverage for all police officers against injury, disability or death caused while on duty.

Those deployed in specialised wings such as operations, bomb disposal squads or commando units shall be paid a risk allowance commensurate with the possible risks involved in performing these duties.

Further, besides developing exclusive hospitals both for general and specialised treatments, the police officers would also be allowed medical insurance.

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