Jammu, September 12
If you are coming on security duty in this highly sensitive state, arrange for your own cots, beddings, pay for new phone connections and be ready to sleep in the open or in dirty rooms without fans but full of insects and mosquitoes.

If this is not enough, be ready to clear the blocked sewerage, clean dirty pipes, repair the taps of buildings arranged for your lodging. And if time remains, one can take care of the weapons as well.

This is the sordid “hospitality” given to 450 policemen of the Indian Reserve Battalion (IRB) from Punjab, which has taken over from the CRPF the sensitive duty of guarding vital installations in Jammu and Samba, besides assisting the local police at nakas and managing protests.

Worse, the extra burden in the form of expenditure on buying cots, beds, beddings and others is pinching these cops more, as they were promised an advance release of 75 per cent of daily allowance for this duty.

“We have already spent half of our salary in buying cots and beddings. We were promised an advance payment of the daily allowance, but not a single penny has been given to us,” complained a constable lying on the floor in a hall of the MLAs hostel here.

A visit to the MLAs hostel, where the Punjab cops have been deployed for security, revealed that they were made to stay in worse possible conditions. There were only 10 wooden beds, that too broken and worn out, for nearly 110 cops. The plywood had come off.

From the security point of view, the hostel becomes sensitive as MLAs and their staff stay here when the Durbar remains here from late October to April.

“For the past five days, we have been cleaning the place, running after local employees for clearing the blocked sewerage and water pipes or doing it ourselves,” complained another constable.

“We paid Rs 250 to Rs 350 for a new phone connection. Then, we pooled in money to buy beds and cots. We could have brought the stuff from Punjab if we had known this,” he said.

“Mosquitoes we will kill and protesters we will manage, but at least give us basic things like a bed and a fan. We feel like labourers lying on footpaths in Ludhiana,” said an angered head constable.

Even senior officers have not got any proper accommodation. The cops under the command of DIG Iqbal Singh, an officer noted for his work in combating militancy, has been forced to manage basic amenities on his own. However, Iqbal Singh declined to comment on the issue only saying his force was rearing to work in any kind of circumstances.

The condition of cops deployed in other places is worse. If the cops are wasting most of their energy on making arrangements for proper accommodation, how could they be expected to focus fully on their primary job - handling law and order and providing a foolproof security ?