Now, character certificates must for mumbai maids

Now, character certificates must for maids

Your hunt for a maid to do your household chores just got more difficult. According to a new police initiative, maids or domestic helps will now be required to get 'character certificates' before they are hired. The special branch and local police stations will verify the antecedents of the domestic helps, especially to check whether they have previous criminal records. Officials added that those employers who do not follow the orders and hire domestic helps without police verification and character certificates will be booked as per the law. "This will help bring down the crime rate," said deputy commissioner of police Pratap Dighavkar. The officials said that the initiative would be useful especially in cases in which the maids come from outside the city. It is usually difficult to trace such offenders if they run away after committing the crime. "Several sectors — including aviation, hospitality, and shipping — demand character certificates from their employees before joining. In some cases, the same has to be done every year," said another police official. The police have decided to take this initiative after a spate of thefts, housebreaking incidents and robberies took place in the last few months across the city. The investigation in most such cases revealed that the household helpers were behind the crime. However, the investigation also came to a standstill in many cases because of the non-availability of information about the accused domestic helps. In some cases, even if the information was available and submitted to the police station concerned, it turned out to be untrue. Police sources said that in the name of police verification of servants, officials have merely been storing CVs and photographs of the domestic helps. The police verification has so far not required them to get character certificates from the police stations under whose jurisdictions the domestic helps resided.