In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the Wakad police conducted a survey of 400 housing societies and caught 60 per cent of security guards sleeping on duty.
This was part of their new initiative to create awareness and check the vigilance of security guards employed by the housing societies. “We are following the directives of the Pimpri-Chinchwad police commissioner, RK Padmanabhan who has asked us to create a database of all the society members in every society in Wakad area,” said Satish Mane, senior police inspector, Wakad police station.
“Besides this, as Diwali festival is around the corner, almost 50 per cent of the society members go out of the city for holidays, thus leaving their homes in the safety of security guards, and so to check their alertness and vigilance, we decided to conduct a survey,” said Mane.
The police found 148 societies where the security guards were asleep on duty between 2.30 am to 4.30 am. “We had made 35 groups of two policemen each, so every group goes to 10 societies in the Wakad area. It took us one and half hours where we found out that most of the security guards and watchmen were fast asleep during duty hours,” he said. The officials have sent a report and photographic evidence to a common social application to create alertness among people of the societies. The police will continue such ‘surprise checks’ once every month in every society hence forth.
Sudam Chavan, chairman of Vardhaman residency in Kaspate Vasti, said, “It is a good effort undertaken by police to make residents aware of how security guards, who are employed should be alert on their job. Also, it has been noticed that many societies’ employee economically viable security guards and when they are not adequately paid, they don’t perform their duties well.”
{{/usCountry}}Sudam Chavan, chairman of Vardhaman residency in Kaspate Vasti, said, “It is a good effort undertaken by police to make residents aware of how security guards, who are employed should be alert on their job. Also, it has been noticed that many societies’ employee economically viable security guards and when they are not adequately paid, they don’t perform their duties well.”
{{/usCountry}}Harshad Deshmukh, chairman of Platinum towers in Wakad, which is one of the societies where the police caught the security guard sleeping, said, “It must be true that the police caught our security guard sleeping but this perhaps may be a misunderstanding for we have three more guards on duty on rotation basis, so when one sleeps, others guard the society. This is the third security agency that we have hired and we understand the importance of security and alertness on their part, but these guards are mostly migrants who work on two jobs and though we are aware of the problem, it will be great if the police can also give us solutions to the same?”