Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has ordered that all-women Police Control Room vans to be mobilized in major five cities of the state to provide free safe transport to women in distress.
PCR vans rushing to help stranded women seeking to be dropped safely to their home or workplace will be manned entirely by women police personnel in Mohali, Amritsar, Patiala, Ludhiana and Jalandhar, Punjab DGP, Dinkar Gupta said here on Thursday.
Notably, the Chief Minister had launched the scheme on December 3, amid growing concerns over the safety of women, whereby police help is provided to women stranded outside between 9 pm and 6 am.
The DGP said that since the launch of the scheme to drop women safely home, a total of 40 calls had been received on 100/112, 181 and 1091 helpline numbers between December 3 and December 18.
Women callers are connected immediately to the Police Patrolling Vehicles and concerned police stations as part of the pick-up and drop facility, available to women who do not have access to a safe vehicle, including taxi or three-wheeler, DGP said.
Giving details of the distress calls received so far, the DGP said in a statement here that the minimum response time taken by police patrolling parties to reach the caller was seven minutes and the maximum 30 minutes, averaging a total of 12 minutes.
"The police parties safely dropped callers at their place of residence/place where they wanted to go. In some cases, women journalists from electronic media also gave dummy calls to the Police Control Room to check the police response time, and successfully verified the same, he said.
In majority of the cases, a woman police officer was present in the PCR, said the DGP, adding that the scheme is still in the initial stage and having some teething problems, which were being streamlined.
"Once that is done, all PCR vans helping women in distress will have a lady cop, he added.
Though the scheme was officially announced for women stranded between 9 pm and 6 am, the DGP said the Chief Minister had directed the police to ensure support to any woman who feels unsafe at any time of the day, he said.
Acting on this directive, the Pathankot Police had on December 5, helped out a woman who had called at around 8.05 pm by dropping her safely home, he said.
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