Police control room staff take lessons in Queen’s language   

“We wanted to bring in attitudinal change among the staff members. How they respond to irate citizens in trouble,asking for police help. The police commissioner had urged various agencies in a statement to come forward and train control room staffers. Vishwakarma Institute responded to our request and offered help in this regard,” Thombare explains.

Latha Krishnamurthy, faculty in English language at Vishwakarma Institute,which is run by BR Agrawal Charitable Trust,worked as the instructor for the programme. “The staff members knew their job. But they were weak at conversing in English and also lagged behind when it came to etiquettes. Our sessions comprised of listening and speaking exercises. The stress was first to make the caller comfortable and then handle the call,” he said.

Staffers face a lot of difficulty in comprehending accented English of foreign nationals. Krishnamurthy had a unique way to deal with this. “I visited various places in Pune where I can find foreign nationals and recorded their voices. I got recordings from Japanese,Iranian,German,French and other nationals. I played them in our class to make participants habituated to these accents. The method has really worked for them. I can see a drastic change in their comprehension of accented English,” said Krishnamurthy.

Shilpa Sawant,constable working in control room,

said,“During half-an-hour training session,we were taught how to converse in English and how not to converse in English. Krishnamurthy explained to us differences between similar words and also refreshed our grammar.”

“Training for next batch of 35 staffers has already begun. We will be completing training of the staff step by step in the coming months,” said Thombare.