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| 'Men in khaki' multiply at the expense of 'men in blue' | | |
Jammu, May 06
Even as number of state police force
dressed in Khaki continue to swell in Jammu and Kashmir
their counterparts and lesser mortals dressed in blue uniform
performing 'traffic duty' remained totally neglected over the
years and recording only marginal increase in the overall strength for
checking violations, reckless driving and other duties.
And the immediate fallout of the shortage of traffic police
force is that the state has witnessed ever rising curve in the
graph of road accidents and official figures indicate that during
the last three years more than 2700 people were killed and
over 23000 injured in various parts of the state.
The official reports said yearly more than 20,000
to 25,000 vehicles, including commercial and
non-commercial four wheelers were added to the already
strong fleet strength in the Jammu region alone. The
fast rise in the number of vehicles has not witnessed
any corresponding rise in the strength of the traffic
police.
As a result of steep rise in the level of road
accidents the general insurance companies have
suffered huge losses.Senior functionaries of two
insurance companies said “our
return from the annual premium is too meager to meet
the compensation and claim of even two major
road
accidents in which scores of people get killed.”
The officials confirmed that after “we went on
insuring commercial vehicles on selective basis and
many transporters have started insuring their vehicles
with branch offices of insurance companies in the
neighbouring states.”
Mr Shafqat Ali Watali,SSP traffic,said
“there are 300 traffic policemen including 45 officers
for checking violations,especially overloading in
buses,in the Jammu region.He said this small number of
traffic officials was not in a position to
check
violations in the farflung areas.He said large number
of road accidents “are the result of mishandling of
licensing and fitness of passenger vehicles being
handled by the transport department.”
Other officials said that “usually licences are
being issued to
drivers who are not fully qualified to
drive heavy vehicles.”The Traffic officials said that
addition of more than 50,000 constables and officials
in the police Department was warranted because of the
security situation but the traffic Department should
have not been neglected.
Senior functionaries of the traffic department
said that additional force of traffic policemen was
needed to check violations in the accident prone areas
of Poonch,Rajouri,Doda and Udhampur districts where
about 1,000 buses and minibuses ply each day besides
2,000 buses plying on interdistrict routes every
day.Against this three dozen traffic policemen are
deployed in these areas for keeping a watch on
overloading,checking fitness of vehicles and for
managing traffic .They said that if atleast two
additional battalions of the traffic police were
raised it would bring down the level of road
accidents
in the state.
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