Unchecked staff pose threat

Vijayawada: With the increase in number of ‘door-to-door’ services by private aggregation firms through websites and smartphone applications in the city, the safety of women at home too is turning out to be a concern. Delivery of a range of products, including locally available groceries are being done at door step upon request through phone, mobile application or the website by the national chain firms, including e-commerce firms.

However, a number of city-based firms came up recently offering services like plumbing, carpentry, repairs of any electronic, electrical devices and others. These firms send technicians to the given addresses and get the works done. Some of the local firms aim at providing such services at houses whose heads usually busy professional get stuck in office work. Though such services help housewives manage all the works related to homemaking, at the same time pose a threat to them.

There are situations were housemaids and other workers attacked owners or committed thefts in the houses after observation when they visit them. In Dec. 2014, a woman V. Maduri Devi, 66, of Gunadala was killed by a carpenter who had been to her house to make furniture. In April 2015, a housemaid K. Gayatri stole valuables from her owner B. Nageswara Rao when he fell sick. Ironically, there are also aggregators who provide maids in the city.

Cops verification not being done:

None of these aggregation and door delivery service providers are taking the help of police in verifying the background of their employees before hiring them. In fact, there is no proper vigil on such growing firms and services by the government. Only a few of e-commerce services and courier services check the background of their delivery boys through their own network. However, it is not authentic unless the police department certifies the criminal background of a person.

“The firms as well as individuals must make use of the services of city police to check the background of a person before hiring them. To make the process easy and much affective we introduced free services on the mobile application 4th Lion where one can seek verification of maid, drivers, tenants and others,” said DCP (admin) Mr G.V.G. Ashok Kumar. Mr Ashok Kumar said that more awareness among public is needed to use these services and currently only a few requests of police verifications are coming in. “After receiving the request at Unified Police Service Centre or through mobile app we check the person’s background and past 12 years of city’s criminal records.”

Mr Ashok Kumar further said that databases of criminal records are rolled out to all the smart tablets given to police officers and even they can check the background of a person. Contrary to the situation here, most of western countries and a few metro cities in India insist companies on verifying background of a person before hiring them into door-to-door services.