The SSB women personnel on the frontiers have got much-needed gender-friendly facilities with the border-guarding force providing them with private barrack cubicles and sanitary pad incinerators for the first time.
As part of the initiative to ensure better working conditions for female staffers, the paramilitary force has also ordered the procurement of suitable and body-fit size protectors, bullet-proof vests, helmets, shoes and raincoats for women troops on combat duties.
The Sashastra Seema Bal, guarding the Indo-Nepal and the Indo-Bhutan borders on the country's east, has also modified toilets in the border areas to ensure privacy for women, who often work odd hours due to the nature of their duties.
We have created some separate living blocks for women troopers in the barracks at their place of posting in the border areas.Archana Ramasundaram, Director General, SSB
The paramilitary force has been working on the idea for about a year, said the DG, adding that the gender-friendly infrastructure is now being put into place for the first time.
At all the locations where women are posted or deployed, sanitary napkin dispensers and incinerators have been installed.
This is the first time a paramilitary force has created such separate facilities for its women personnel deployed in far-flung frontier areas.
Ramasundaram, the first woman chief of a Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) or paramilitary, added that their focus is now to get separate toilets for women at these locations and said it will be done in the future.
At the jawan barracks in border areas, a senior SSB officer said, separate entries have already been created for female personnel as they are co-deployed with their men colleagues.
"A washing machine has been provided in every unit accommodation of women personnel and pulley-based drying racks have been installed so that the women can easily dry their intimate and other clothings in the barrack area," the officer added.
The about 70,000-personnel strong force has also procured ladders to be fitted in heavy troop carrier vehicles and trucks so that women personnel can easily climb up and down as and when required.
As it was difficult to get sanitary pads in the area of deployment, the force has installed dispensers, replenished every few weeks, and incinerators as sweepers would refuse to pick up the used ones, the officer added.
The force has also got the Union Home Ministry's sanctions to have special buses having in-built toilets for exclusive use by women personnel on duty, the officer said.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)