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| A police van in front of a bank at Unit-I of Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati |
Bhubaneswar, Feb 18: Senior citizens havedemanded better response from the police while handling issues that affect them.
During an interaction with the police here today, the senior citizens raised several issues, including their registration, uploading their database on police website and antecedent verification of domestic helps and guards.
The Senior Citizen Security Cell of the police is now functioning in 10 police stations in the city. These are Chandrasekharpur, Nayapalli, Capital, Saheed Nagar, Kharavela Nagar, Khandagiri, Airfield, Badagada, Mancheswar and Lingaraj.
Police officials said that as many as 573 senior citizens have so far registered themselves in these police stations.
Most of the senior citizens demanded a monthly counselling by the nodal officer.
“Most of us have been registered with the police. But at the same time, we requested the police to register another 200 senior citizens of the city. Similarly, we drew the attention of police commissioner regarding harsh behaviour meted out to us by police officials on several occasions,” said president of the Federation of Senior Citizens’ Association of Odisha Krupasindhu Sahoo.
“City traffic has become unruly. The police must come forward to help us, especially on the major roads of the city,” said a senior citizen.
The murder of a 68-year-old banker at Kalinga Nagar in February last year had exposed the vulnerability of elderly people who are living alone in the city. The murder of an elderly couple at Acharya Vihar in September 2012 had also forced the other senior citizens to demand special attention from the police.
Police commissioner R.P. Sharma said that training and orientation programmes were being conducted frequently for the police officials for their behavioural change.
“We will conduct such programmes and will ask the officials to treat the senior citizens properly,” said Sharma.