JOIN USScuba diving to make cops future-ready
Attention! With threat perceptions and demands of future security scenarios not allowing planners and authorities to remain ‘at ease’, 1,731 new recruit constables, beginning next month, will go through a rigorous 44-week training programme involving scuba diving and boxing among other things.
“Every day, terrorists are teaching us a new thing. Training of security personnel, therefore, cannot be archaic. The British-style saluting, march past and drill cannot constitute the training of our personnel anymore,” Bhaskar Rao, IGP (Training) and nodal officer, Karnataka State Industrial Security Force (KSISF), said.
110-page syllabus
In line with the argument, a 110-page syllabus prepared by a committee headed by the present joint commissioner of crime, Hemanth Nimbalkar, prescribes scuba diving among other adventure sports, boxing among contact sports and other activities.
The syllabus also focuses on specialised training in close-quarter warfare and training modules that concentrate on urban warfare and counter-intelligence operations. He said the training will have one area to focus on each week.
The constables will be part of the ambitious KSISF, to train whom the State police’s internal security division had to prepare a new syllabus to suit the Force’s needs.
The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), on the lines of which the KSISF is planned, did not oblige the request to train the constabulary.
Rao, while noting that the constables would be trained at the four training establishments in the State, said: “Private resource personnel and men of the CISF will assist us in the training.”
A meeting with the various (constable) training institutes in Karnataka was held about three days ago, as they would also require to put in place certain new infrastructure to support the advanced fitness and physical training modules prescribed in the new syllabus.
Special security
In his budget, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had said that special security would be provided for certain dams and reservoirs, the responsibility of which will rest with the KSISF.
The Force, which got an official approval earlier this year, will also have 139 sub-inspectors who are being trained by the CISF at its National Institute of Security Academy in Hakimpet, Secunderabad.
Part of a nine-month course, the team of officers has already completed three months and will return to take charge in December this year.