Govt. hopes ‘home training’ will tempt young Tamils into police

A thousand Tamil- speaking police officers – half of them female – will be added to the ranks in the Northern and Eastern provinces in a major recruitment drive to resolve the longstanding communication gap between police and residents of those areas.

“We are hoping to recruit 1,000 police personnel, including 500 female officers, shortly as a major step to address the longstanding shortage of Tamil- speaking officials in both provinces,” said retired Senior Superintendent of Police T. Ganeshanathan, who has been serving in the North for the past three years to improve relations between the police and the local population.

“A gazette notification calling for applications for the posts of police constables, women constables and Sub-Inspectors will be issued by March 20,” he said.

Senior Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police Roshan Fernando also pointed out the dire need to recruit Tamil- speaking police personnel into the provincial force in order to ensure better community service for locals and strengthen law and order.

“Currently, only 12 per cent (720) of the total provincial force of 6,000 officers can communicate in Tamil,” DIG Fernando said.

He noted that most Tamil youths are unwilling to join up for various socio-political reasons and that similar recruitment drives in past had met with little success.

The government hopes a key factor in the new recruitment programme will turn that trend around: a Police Training Institute will be set up in the north so that the new recruits can be trained and deployed near home. Currently all new recruits are trained in Kalutara, in the south, and deployed across the country.

Earlier this week, President Maithripala Sirisena, under whose purview the police department stands, instructed senior police to expedite the establishment of a new institute in North when he inquired about the recruitment of Tamil- speaking police.