The top brass of Pune police have decided to train police personnel to drive vehicles to meet the shortage of trained drivers in the force.

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The Pune police have been asking its constables to drive vehicles in emergencies for almost a decade now because its motor transport department is facing manpower shortage. The policemen, who are asked to work as drivers, are being imparted training at the motor transport department in Aundh for four months. Most of the trainees are women.

Sources at the police commissonerate said, “Some policemen approached the Maharashtra administrative tribunal against the decision of asking them to work as drivers, but in vain. As a result, some women cops who had been asked to work as drivers resigned.”

The Pune police recently ordered senior police inspectors (SPI) in-charge of police stations to send their subordinates for a driver’s training course.

The orders say 2,007 policemen will be trained to drive, in phases. The first batch will comprise 45 personnel including 10 from quick response team (QRT), 20 from headquarters (HQ), five from special branch (SB), five from traffic branch and five from crime branch.

The order states that if an officer in-charge of the police station fails to send the staff for the training, disciplinary action would be taken against him. The responsibility of ensuring that the cops shortlisted for training are not allotted any other duty has been entrusted to the officers in-charge of the police stations or units. However, the policemen are not willing to attend the course. A senior police officer told DNA, “In the past, the government used to recruit trained drivers to work with the motor transport wing of the police department. However, the recruitment has been stopped for the last several years. As a result, there is a crunch of drivers and we have to ask our constables to do the duty.”