By Alexia Saoulli
GETTING rid of female police officers who fail to carry out their duties is next to impossible, a high ranking officer said yesterday.
“It’s not so easy to fire officers because they’re not performing all duties required of them. Besides they will never say they don’t want to carry out a certain role, they’ll simply make up another excuse or find some sort of problem to get out of it. Sometimes they’ll even exert certain pressures,” he said.
The officer, who wished to remain unnamed, was responding to a Cyprus Mail query: if women are not carrying out their duties according to police regulations and only accept administrative roles, why are they not dismissed?
The question arose following statements on Monday by police chief Charalambos Koulentis, who said he was concerned about the increasing number of women officers joining the force, the majority of whom were either unable or refused to carry out operational tasks.
“It’s not so easy to get rid of people in the civil service. It’s not like the private sector where you can tell someone to pack their bags after he or she repeatedly fails to undertake the required duties or obligations of that role,” the source said.
The same question was put to Koulentis, but he refused to expand on the issue further.
“I have located a problem. I’ve described it and analysed it and I’ve brought it to the attention of the competent authorities. It is now up to state representatives and the legislative body to do something about it. I don’t want to say anything more. As far as I’m concerned the matter is closed,” he said.
Koulentis has discussed the problem with the Justice Ministry, the Attorney-general and the Ombudswoman. Among his suggestions to improve what he warns will become a huge problem, Koulentis proposed introducing a maximum quota for women and making the physical ability entrance requirements the same for both men and women.
Such policies are currently employed by other EU states.
Failure to do something would create a police force that was made up 50 per cent of women, making it “weak and unable to carry out its obligations”, Koulentis said.
Unsurprisingly, the police chief’s comments did not get much approval from gender equality groups.
The Cyprus Gender Equality Observatory (CGEO) issued a press release expressing its “surprise and strong disagreement” with Koulentis’ position and said the law regarding the equal treatment of men and women in employment strictly prohibited any form of discrimination regarding access to employment, either directly or indirectly.
The same statement was issued by the Gender Equality for Employment and Professional Training Committee.
Both groups said the only exception in implementing equal treatment in the security forces was in departments that dealt with the control and disarmament of violent individuals, containing riots and in instances involving the freeing of hostages or other illegally held individuals.
The CGEO said it would not accept the introduction of quotas at the expense of women’s fair treatment and called on the police chief to provide “evidence” of areas where women were in his opinion “lacking” so that the problem could be dealt with based on the principle of gender equality.
A recent internal police survey recently indicated that of the force’s many departments, women officers predominantly worked in administrative roles despite staff shortages in operational departments. It claimed female officers were prone to taking sick leave, making up feeble excuses or using connections to get out of operational duties that involved working shifts, overtime and going into the field.
Women’s physical abilities were another problem raised as they often stopped them from being able to participate in operations involving physical strength such as in the transfer of a dangerous male suspect or containing riots.
The fear is that at the current examination pass rates, half the police force will in the next few years be made up women, who will not be able or want to perform the same duties as men.
The Justice Minister was yesterday unavailable for comment on the issue.
this is a joke. the civil service needs to wake up and shape up. sack the people that aren't performing the job that we as tax payers are paying them for. fact is, even some of the male officers can't carry out their job properly. don't just pick on the woman officers, most civil servants are lazy!!! makes me sooo mad
