By Ajith Sirwardana in Daily Mirror, Dec 11, 2023
Parliament, Dec. 10:: Women police officers have faced injustice when receiving promotions even though all the other aspects such as recruitment, training, deployment and retirement are the same as male police officers, a Parliamentary committee has revealed.
This was disclosed when the Select Committee of Parliament to look into and report its recommendations to ensure gender equity and equality with special emphasis on looking into gender-based discriminations and violations of women’s rights in Sri Lanka, met in Parliament recently under the chairmanship of MP Sudarshini Fernandopulle.
It was revealed that there are 92 female Chief Inspectors who have completed twenty-six years of service and four years in the position of Chief Police Inspector, but no specific system or vacancies have been identified regarding their promotions.
The method of recruitment of these female officers and the salary level is the same as the male officers and training is provided 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 granting promotions to male officers and only female officers are faced with problems related to vacancies each time.
It was disclosed that a remedy for this issue has not been forthcoming so far and hence female officers have to remain in the same position for a long time while male officers with less seniority are promoted.
Furthermore, to avoid this situation, 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 promotions system, a system to appoint the officers who meet the qualifications required for the respective positions by preparing the above system or another suitable system to grant promotions within a specific period of time based on 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 15% of the total force of the Police Service is currently occupied by female officers and hence 15% of the available vacancies should be reserved for female officers to solve this problem.
https://www.dailymirror.lk/breaking-news/Women-police-officers-mistreated-when-granting-promotions-Committee-reveals/108-272962
