Pune civic body doubles remuneration of trainers teaching self-defence to girls in civic schools

The training is given to girl students of classes V to XII and those between the ages of 15 years and 25 years in civic schools during regular school timings.

“The programme of self-defence training to girl students was getting good response with nearly 2,700 students being trained every year. It is an important programme and needs to be continued,” said municipal commissioner Rajendra Bhosale.

The private agencies and trainers had conveyed that the emolument of Rs 3,000 per month per batch is very less and had not been changed since 2013, he said. There was a demand of Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 per month per batch but the civic administration thinks it is feasible for trainers to hold self-defence training for Rs 6,000 per batch per month, he added.

Deputy Municipal Commissioner Nitin Udas said the PMC plan of free self-defence training is worth the protection skills of girls. “We want to extend the programme for girls other than the civic school students so that many more will benefit from the programme,” he said.

“The PMC-run self-defence programme is very useful for girl students as it trains them on ways to protect them from miscreants. The girls too are very keen to learn the skills that will help them throughout their lives,” said a principal of a civic school who didn’t want to be named.

However, a private agency, KBK Raksha, said the PMC needs to do more to make the programme effective. “We were into providing self-defence training to girl students of civic schools but the response was not good enough. The principal of civic schools are not very active when it comes to training girl students in self-defence. Their priority is academics and often cite reasons like unavailability of time for self-defence programmes for girl students,” said Komal Bansal of KBK Raksha.

Moreover, the self-defence programme should be for a minimum of six months to get well-equipped with the skills, she said, adding that the PMC sessions are too short and the attendance is poor.

The need for self-defence skills for girls is a must but the civic body programme looks impressive only on paper and is not that effective in reality, said Bansal.