There have been many job losses so far in the face of the Covid epidemic. The impact of losing a job is not limited to a family. Even the country’s economy will be severely affected.
For a country like ours that is not economically strong, it feels overwhelming.
This post is not about job losses due to industry and institutional collapse in the face of the Covid epidemic. It is about losing the job they get due to the evil nature of the police, in such a difficult time.
Many workplaces in our country today require police certification when recruiting new employees. Police certification is mandatory especially for jobs in telecom, ports, hotels etc.
A resident of Gampaha is requesting a police certificate for a job he got at the Bandaranaike International Airport from the Gampaha Police Station along with a letter issued by the relevant company and a Grama Seva certificate. The man even provided the way to his house to the officers at the police certificate issuance counter.
The applicant usually receives the police certificate from the police headquarters for employment abroad within two weeks. Issuing those certificates is a complex task. However, the Police Headquarters has informed that no more than two or three days should be allowed to issue a police certificate from the village police station for local employments.
However, a week passed and the police officers did not come to the house or the area where he was staying, looking for him. Now he was in danger of losing his job. Because he did not have a police certificate.
Because of this, he went to the police station last Saturday morning. He met the officers at the Police Reporting Counter and expressed his interest and requested that the police report be released as soon as possible. The answer he gets there is to come the next day. During the few minutes he was there, many people came to ask for police reports. Among them were those who had been waiting for police reports for more than a week or two. Most are young people. Some were shouting at the police, others were whispering to themselves, blaming police officers’ parents, while two others were left empty-handed with tears streaming down their faces.
This person comes to the police station the next day ready to take the police report. The officers who were there the day before were not there the next day. There was a new officer. After presenting the application number, he turned over a book and said in a loud voice, “The record has not been made yet.”
“Sir, if I don’t take the police report on Monday, I won’t get the job,” he humbly told the police officer.
“We can’t say a date. We have to come to the houses and check them.” The police officer said a little harshly as if he was talking about the power of the police.
All this happened when a relative of this person had a very close relationship with the police. He hoped that the relative would inform a senior police officer about the situation and get the police report soon. He told the relative everything about the people who came to the police reporting unit and left empty-handed.
The relative of this person is thinking of informing the IGP, the highest ranking police officer, about this. It is to create an environment not only in Gampaha but in the whole country to stop this ugly act of the police when people are losing their jobs at a time where they do not even get a job.
That’s when the situation ignites. There was a great deal of interest in police reporting. One by one the officers began to run here and there as if a whip had been blown. “Sir, wait two minutes. I will give your report now,” said the police officers.
The story is not that. The Gampaha Police had tried to deceive the IGP at that time. “Sir, we release every report within two or three days. In fact, only the mentioned report and two others are left.” This is how they were going to trick IGP even though there are three large piles of documents in the police station that have not been handed over at that time.
The Gampaha police may not have known that C. D. Wickramaratne was not an easy person to trick as other IGPs in the Sri Lanka Police. SSP Indika de Silva in charge of the Gampaha Division immediately sent by the IGP to the Gampaha Police Station and instructed to inspect files relating to police records. By then, more than a week had passed since the end of October, but only about 10 percent of the police reports submitted in October revealed that they had been released. This is how the Gampaha Police went to deceive the IGP and dragged themselves away.
