Kozhikode: Student Excise Cadets no more

KOZHIKODE: The Student Excise Cadets, a project initiated in Kozhikode more than a year ago in line with the Student Police Cadets, has suffered a major setback with the excise commissioner Rishi Raj Singh receiving "not impressive" reports from the educational institutions. Mr Singh told Deccan Chronicle that he was already moving ahead with creating interactive platforms and there was no need for ‘half-hearted’ efforts.

“On a daily basis, I am receiving 1,000 complaints on an average. Nearly 500-600 messages on WhatsApp, 200 SMS and 200 calls. Students, parents and teachers are free to interact with me, and there are two police officers solely devoted to attending the complaints coming to phone numbers - 9447178000 and 6091178000. Our officials are personally visiting 1000 institutions every day,” said the commissioner.

He added that he had personally created 14 WhatsApp groups for all the districts and there are more than 200 members in each of them. “The groups have principals of almost all the institutions, and we are regularly getting the feedback. I believe, these efforts are on track compared to the half-hearted efforts similar to SPC,” said Mr Singh. The SECs were formed in January 2015 with nearly 1,000 students from Kozhikode, in the backdrop of the state school arts festival. Though the initiative attracted attention in the district, it failed to get spread across the state. The selected students were given uniforms and training to deal closely with the youngsters, especially teenagers doing drugs.