Basic qualifications for PCs in EP relaxed

By Jayampathy Jayasinghe

The National Police Commission (NPC) has decided to relax the basic educational qualifications for recruitment of Police Constables in newly liberated areas, of Mavilaru and Verugal of the Eastern Province owing to the dearth of Tamil-speaking persons in these areas, a spokesman for the NPC said.

The Police Department has already recruited 125 young men and 50 women from Mavilaru and Verugal areas who are now undergoing training at the Kaladi Police training centre. The police constables will be posted to serve in their home stations after the training period. They will be deployed for community policing work in their home stations.

The training centre was earlier occupied by STF personnel. The new police training centre was opened on October 10 by DIG Traffic and Administration S.K. Shankar and DIG Training S. Pathirana. Senior DIG T. Balasuriya also participated. Although there are 500 vacancies for Tamil-speaking Police Constables only 175 have applied so far.

"This was because the young men and women fled the Mavilaru and Verugal areas while it was being liberated from the LTTE. As a result there is a dearth of young men and women in these areas to be recruited as police constables," sources said.

National Police Commission (NPC) sources said that the educational qualifications for the first 500 Police Constables will be relaxed owing to the dearth of men and women from these areas. However, the stipulated qualifications will apply after 500 constables are recruited. Even the upper age limit for Police Constables has been extended to 35 years to accommodate men and women, police sources said.