The Select Committee of Parliament on gender equity has issued recommendations to the Ministry of Public Security to rectify with immediate effect the injustice done when promoting female Police officers.
According to a Parliament statement, the committee was informed by female Police officers that injustice is done to women officers only in promotion.
This was disclosed during a meeting of the Select Committee of Parliament appointed to look into and report its recommendations to ensure gender equity and equality with special emphasis on looking into gender-based discrimination and violations of women’s rights in Sri Lanka.
The matter was raised when the Committee met in Parliament recently (Dec 07) under the Chairmanship of its Chairperson, MP (Dr.) (Mrs.) Sudarshini Fernandopulle.
It was disclosed that 92 female chief inspectors have completed twenty-six years of service and completed four years in the position of chief police inspector, but no specific system or vacancies have been identified regarding their promotion.
The method of recruitment of these female officers, the salary level is the same as the male officers and the training is done together in the same training school without any difference and the deployment after the training is done in the same way without any difference and the method of retirement is also the same. But the aggrieved police officers pointed out that there is no problem related to vacancies when giving promotions to male officers and only female officers have problems related to vacancies each time.
It was disclosed that a remedy for that has not been prepared so far and for this reason, female officers have to stay in the same position for a long time while male officers with less seniority are promoted.
Furthermore, to avoid this situation of concern, since more than 15% of the Sri Lanka Police are female officers, it was proposed to create vacancies for 15% female representation in all positions.
Attention was also paid to the preparation of a system to resolve the current problematic situation, prepare a certain promotion system that impacts one situation, a system to appoint the officers who meet the qualifications required for the respective positions by preparing the above system or another suitable system and make it just to give promotions within a specific period to a specific system.
Officials of the Ministry of Public Security pointed out that proposals for creating new vacancies have been sent to the Department of Management Services.
The Committee Chair recommended to the Secretary of the Ministry of Public Security that as 15% of the total force of the Police Service is currently employed by female officers 15% of the available vacancies should be reserved for female officers to solve this problem. (NewsWire)