Place us in AISF, demand SPOs

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, July 5: The Special Police Officers’ Welfare Society (SPOWS) is going to stage a two-hour dhar at Dighalipukhuripar in the city on July 17 in support of its demand for permanent placement of SPOs as Assam Industrial Security Force (AISF). The Society has warned Dispur that if none from the government meets its leaders during their dhar, it will resort to do something unprecedented for which only the government will be held responsible.

Talking to newsmen at Guwahati Press Club on Wednesday, Society president Dilip Saikia said: “We want a clear-cut response from the government that has kept us on tenterhooks. Uncertainty continues to haunt us. We had a notion that the BJP Government would put an end to the neglect we were facing during the Congress rule. However, the bureaucrats of this government continue to disdain us.”        

Saikia alleged that from January to June this year their file was gathering dust on the table of Additiol Home Secretary Ashim Sarma. “We’re appointed in 2008 and 2012 when there was upsurge in militancy in the State. With the problem of militancy being subdued, we have been thrown like discarded material. We had to fight the ULFA members. However, those ULFA members have been absorbed in the Assam Police as soon as they surrendered, but we’ve been discarded like useless material. We want a clarification from the government in this regard,” Saikia said.