Is our traffic system monitored and controlled effectively? Are Traffic personnel on beats and roads seen performing their duties even after dusk and in the wee hours? Are traffic rules during this time strictly observed hence no requirement of the traffic police? Who is to check and prevent those vehicles from plying on roads which have no fitness tags or those vehicles including two wheeler bikes that generate too much of shrieking noise and causing huge noise pollution? These are a few common question that ordinarily broadly would arise whenever traffic and traffic related issues are discussed. Whenever we intend to satiate our quest about the cause of the absence of Traffic Police personnel even on National Highway , hilly roads and those roads prone to accidents barring symbolic presence , we come to know that the Department was reeling under staff shortage. Reports are that nearly 2000 personnel are required in Traffic Police Force as that figure must have been worked out keeping in view the requirement of deployment at unmanned or scantly manned points as also operating during night and early morning hours. A small review of the entire system was done in 2007-08 and thereafter nothing in the revamping or the reorganisation of the Force only depicts belief in the system not requiring any measures of much required energizing .
It is not that various problems faced by the Force are not in know of the concerned authorities due to which the need to re-organise the Traffic Police is felt necessary which includes not only providing additional hands but to train and equip them on modern lines and to be of such professional efficiency that meets almost all the requirements of traffic regulation, control and management. A mechanism to convene Road Safety Council meetings periodically is to taking stock of the safety norms and other measures all related to traffic on roads and how best it plied observing and strengthening road safety norms. Usually, unfortunately when a tragic road accident takes place, all such reforms, re-organisation and revamping like measures are hotly discussed but very less is done on the ground practically.
Agreed , increasing the manpower is a big issue but no stress is laid on extensive training , research , sheer professionalism and dealing with traffic violations of various hues in non-obsolete ways. If showing a few ‘challans ‘ prepared against some traffic rules violators during the day is all in the name of performing the duty, then a comprehensive and not a limited re-organisation of the entire Force cannot any more be afforded to be deferred. That also, when seen in the extent of volume of traffic incessantly increasing as against the same strength and quality of roads. It is also a complete casual approach by the top police authorities in not identifying police stations and designating them for investigating why accidents on roads frequently take place which in most of the cases are unfortunately fatal.
However, whatever in the reorganisation of Traffic Department was planned, even that has not travelled beyond official papers and files. After all, this proposed reorganisation can be seen in the context of or as a part of reforms in the system, only with a vision to make the force compatible , consistent , capable and congruent . We learn that the very basis of requirement of infusing new vigour in the force is becoming a stumbling block in the reorganisation process which is deficiency of 2000 personnel. Police Headquarters and Finance Department are seen holding divergent approaches towards the need to augment manpower in Traffic Police Force for which a timeline too was fixed in respect of preparing an Action Taken Report to be submitted to the Road Safety Secretariat. Let mere rhetoric and promises to bring in changes and reforms in the Traffic Police be not confined to the immediate aftermaths of a major road accident but put into practical shape to let a sense of improvement , reforms, reorganisation and restructuring be felt both by the Force and the public with which the Traffic Department has close inalienable connect.
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