The Police’s Chief Political Commissar, AIGP Asan Kasingye has said he is longing for a day; he will see a female officer taking over the mantle as the Inspector General of Police in Uganda.
For over 100 years when the Uganda Police Force was formed by the British, no woman has been in charge of the force as Inspector General of Police.
However, speaking during the opening ceremony of the second annual Uganda Police female officers’ national conference held at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala on Friday, Kasingye said it is high time the police force got a female chief.
“I envisage a day when I will see a woman as Uganda’s Inspector General of Police,”Kasingye said.
The Police Force’s Chief Political Commissar, however, warned the female officers that going to the top should not be in mere words but rather working hard for it.
“You can’t just jump there but you must work for it. When we say we are sending you to a hard to reach area or somewhere else to work as DPC or OC station, take the challenge. Never complain of any transfers even in hard to reach areas,”Kasingye told them.
He said that as one of the officers who sit on the police’s placement committee chaired by the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Maj.Gen.Muzeeyi Sabiiti, many female officers have always been seconded to be transferred to other areas but he noted, many of them have always turned down the transfers over a number of issues.
“One of the things we look out for at a broad spectrum as the placement committee is resilience. One senior female officer told me he didn’t to be where she was and that she needed to be transferred to another place.. However, two months later, she called me saying she had made a mistake and that she wanted to return to her former deployment,”Kasingye said.
“When we try to put you somewhere, you complain. How are you going to progress if you don’t want to be transferred? When we ask you go for senior and junior command course you don’t want. How will you progress without these?”
The Police Director in charge of Research, Planning and Logistics, AIGP Edward Ochom said female police officers should encourage as many women as possible to join the force.
“Before I joined the Police Force, I was inspired by someone. Women police officers should try to inspire others in schools, universities and in various areas so we can have many of them join. Unless you do it, we are not going to have many women in the Police Force,” AIGP Ochom said.
The Uganda Police Force currently has a total of 41,760 personnel and of these, only 7,777 are female which constitutes 18.6 percent.
The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga said the force should put in place a quota system that will see 30% of police officers recruited in the next recruitment exercise are women.
“Starting from now, there should be a quota system of ensuring 30% of police officers recruited are females. We need to find a way of assisting them to get to the top hierarchy of the institution,”Kadaga said.
She also noted that there should be special facilities in place for female police officers are police stations including child care centres and toilets.
While deploying female officers, Kadaga requested that the force should put into consideration their families and be deployed in areas near their families so as to keep the bond.
This year’s annual female Police officers’ conference ran under the theme: “Promoting Women’s Advancement and Leadership in the Uganda Police Force”.
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