Hry police looks towards youth to help curb eve teasing

At a time when the Uttar Pradesh police has set up anti-Romeo squads, cops in neighbouring Haryana are planning to train over a lakh young volunteers to help them tackle in curbing the problem of eve teasing.

"We have put in place a comprehensive programme to check eve-teasing. The trouble spots have been identified. Work to sanitise them by the way of warnings and cautioning signages, CCTV cameras, plain-cloth traps and time-aligned uniformed police patrolling is in progress," Additional Director General of Police (Headquarters) O P Singh told PTI here today.

He added that the state police would also encourage young boys and girls to enrol as volunteers to help curb the problem of eve teasing.
 

"At the rate of 5,000 volunteers per district, we look forward to have some 1,10,000 volunteers onboard in next one month," Singh said.

These boys and girls would guide our actions to weed out gender-based street violence, usually trivialised as eve-teasing, he said.

The senior police official added that the volunteers would be trained through online tutorials to become "change makers".

"We are very keen to team up with the youth, who are our natural allies in our fight for making public places safer for women," he said.

The police official said that the move is a part of the 'Youth Against Sexual Harassment' (YASH) initiative with which Haryana police is partnering.

Singh said that the Haryana police is also collaborating with schools, colleges, parents, businesses, panchayats, non- governmental organisations and other government departments to spread awareness need to curb the problem.

Speaking about YASH initiative, Singh noted, "We aim to give young boys and girls a platform to voice their opposition to gender-based victimisation. They can make a difference by simply taking a pledge to resist it, speak against it on social media, wear a T-shirt condemning it, spread a word about the seriousness of the problem, organise events to create awareness, alert us about such outrage and so on.

While the cops in Haryana are looking towards involving youth to curb eve teasing, in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, the police have set up anti-Romeo squads to eradicate the problem of eve teasing and ensure that women in the state are safe.