GUWAHATI, Dec 19— Facing problems like acute shortage of manpower, shortage of vehicles and lack of required equipment, the city traffic police force is finding it tough to regulate traffic flow in Guwahati city. The Superintendent of Police, Guwahati city, Sri Hiren Nath said that the strength of the city traffic police force has not been increased since 1982, while, on the other hand, the number of vehicles on city roads has been increasing considerably every day. According to records available, as many as 16,354 vehicles were registered in Guwahati in the year 2000, while, 18,826 were registered last year. More than two lakh vehicles ply on the city roads every day at this moment and the number is increasing with every passing day. Sri Nath revealed that Guwahati city has about 3600 roads, and the present strength of the traffic police force is only 370. “But some of them are on leave and we do not get all the policemen for regular traffic duty as a good number of the police have to be engaged on VIP duty,” he added.
The Additional Sup erintendent of Police (Traffic) Debojit Deori revealed that the city has about 66 identified traffic points and 165 traffic beats. “We have to post at least two persons at a time in every beat; that is four in a day and two persons in every beat. The minimum requirement of the traffic police force to cover all the traffic police points and beats is 630 personnel, and due to manpower shortage, at least 18 to 20 points and 65 to 70 beats remain uncovered every day,” he said. Shortage of vehicles is another major problem faced by the traffic police. At this moment, the force has only two Maruti Gypsys, four Ambassador cars, five trackers and mobile vans, five recovery vans and a handful of motorcycles, used mostly for VIP duty. The number of vehicles is not at all adequate for proper traffic management and for patrolling.
More than a hundred persons are killed in road accidents in the city every year, and majority of the fatal accidents occur due to over speeding, but unfortunately, the Government is yet to provide speedometres to the traffic police to deal with the problem. Drunken driving is another major cause of the fatal accidents but the police force does not have breath analysers to book offenders of drunken driving. The present system of checking drunken driving is not foolproof as “We have to take a person involved in drunken driving to the medical college and by the time the person is tested, it is too late,” the ASP, (Traffic) said.
Other problems like lack of zebra crossings also complicate matters as pedestrians often face accidents while crossing the busy roads. The city police has submitted a proposal for putting up zebra crossings in 25 places for the benefit of pedestrains. At this moment, city police personnel are posted in some busy points to help pedestrains to cross the roads, but that is not adequate. The police has also identified 15 points for construction of foot overbridges and Sri Deori revealed that the Lions Club would soon construct a foot overbridge in front of the Sukreswar temple. Lack of traffic signal lights is another major problem as the policemen have to control traffic manually in all the busy points. The traffic police has already submitted detailed proposal for installation of traffic signal lights at two busy points— Chandmari and Dispur Super market.
To improve the traffic scenario, the city police has launched a drive against offenders and realised fines amounting to Rs 5,30,650 in the month of November and Rs 2,21,100 till the 15th day of December. The city police has printed parking offence tags to be attached to the offending vehicles and some stickers have also been prepared to educate the offenders. The City SP said, “traffic education can reduce the problem by 50 per cent and proper education is more important than enforcement. I have seen educated persons parking their vehicles in no-paring zones.” He said that the city police has launched an orientation course for traffic policemen, while, steps have been taken to educate people through distribution of leaflets by the NGOs, Citizens’ Committees and school students.
Commenting on the common allegation of corruption against traffic policemen, the City SP said that department action was taken against a few policemen for indulging in corruption. “We have made it clear that if any traffic police is caught while accepting bribe, his immediate supervisory officer would also face action. We have also made it compulsory for all traffic policemen to prominently wear their name tags and if any specific complaint is received, immediate action would be taken,” he asserted.