K Koushal
Jammu, Sept 2 : The incompetence of administration in general and the traffic department in particular came to fore, when in the name of streamlining traffic for the movement of President, administration gave a blunt snub to commuters, thus plunging them into great inconvenience.
While the administration was busy streamlining traffic for the cavalcade of President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, who was heading towards technical Airport at Satwari after paying obeisance at Mata Vaishno Devi, commuters including Ambulances had to suffer for hours near Satwari.
Irked over the management of the traffic, people rued that instead of causing great inconvenience to the people, the administration should have chalked out proper traffic arrangements with subtle needful diversions. "It is understood that the president is privileged, but it should not hamper the smooth streaming of traffic, thus affecting the common people. Administration should have, otherwise planned some arrangements to minimize inconvenience," said a commoner, Ashish Bhatra, adding that he has been stuck in the traffic mess for more than 45 minutes. Taking dig at the traffic department of callousness, score of people alleged that due to lethargic approach of the department, patients suffered in the ambulances. "It was shocking to see that instead of giving way to the ambulances, carrying patients, traffic cops were busy negotiating with bikers," said another commuter, Rajesh Kumar. He further said that the traffic mess during VIP movement is due to lack of coordination between concerned departments. Admitting that there should have been proper channelizing of the VIP movement, Div Com Jammu, Shantmanu said, "We will take this thing into consideration and ensure that in future VIP movements would be diverted through city outskirts, thus causing minimum inconvenience to the common people," said he, adding that it becomes prerogative of administration as well as traffic department to coordinate during such
VIP movements to reduce traffic mess. However, when tried to contact Traffic IGP, Muneer Khan, he was unavailable for comments. |
