All-women PCR vans to drop women home in five Punjab cities

Scaling up the police pick-up and drop facility for women in distress, Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh has ordered all-women PCR vans to be mobilised

Scaling up the police pick-up and drop facility for women in distress, Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh has ordered all-women PCR vans to be mobilised in five cities to provide safe transport in response to such calls.

PCRs rushing to help stranded women seeking to be dropped safely to their home/workplace will be manned entirely by women cops in Mohali, Amritsar, Patiala, Ludhiana and Jalandhar.

Stating this here on Thursday, Punjab Police chief Dinkar Gupta said since the launch of the scheme on December 3, 40 calls had been received on 100/112, 181 and 1091 helpline numbers. He said 26 calls were received on 112/100, while two were received on 181 and 12 calls were received on the 1091 helpline.

The chief minister had launched the scheme amid concerns over safety of women, whereby free police help is provided to women stranded outside between 9pm and 6am. Women callers are connected immediately to police patrolling vehicles and police stations as part of the pick-up and drop facility, available to women who do not have access to a safe vehicle, including taxi or three-wheeler.

12 MINUTES IS AVERAGE RESPONSE TIME

The DGP said the minimum response time taken by police patrolling parties to reach the caller was seven minutes and the maximum 30 minutes, averaging 12 minutes.

Women journalists from the electronic media gave dummy calls to the PCR to check the response time, and successfully verified the same.

In a majority of the cases, a woman police officer was present in the PCR, said the DGP, adding the scheme is in its initial stage and having teething problems, which were being streamlined. Once that is done, all PCR vans helping women in distress will have a woman cop.

Though the scheme was announced for women stranded between 9pm and 6am, the chief minister had directed the police to ensure support to any woman who feels unsafe at any time of the day. Acting on this directive, the Pathankot police had on December 5, helped a woman who had called at 8.05pm by dropping her safely home.

There have been instances of passers-by calling up the police helpline on spotting a woman alone at night. One such instance was reported on December 6, at 12.16am, when one Danesh called up 112 helpline and informed about a woman standing alone at Ladhowali Chubti Phatak, Jalandhar. The woman was dropped home by a PCR that reached the spot within 14 minutes with a woman ASI on board.