Traffic police and errant drivers

Prof. Rahmat Karim Baig

There has been considerable improvement in the performance of police in KP but all readers will not agree with this opinion. They say the same is going on at present and unless the training methodology is overhauled the mentality will remain as before. The training imparted to them and the training imparted to the traffic police is basically the same but their specialization is different.

They do work hard, catch criminals, smugglers, drug dealers, law breakers, murderers etc. and also have rendered unprecedented sacrifices against terrorists and play their role very nicely. Service in the police department was easy in the past but hard at present. The rise in population and arrival of small businessmen in the small town of Chitral have brought with it a number of complicated issues that is what the police have to tackle with. Overuse of narcotics by youth and misuse of bikes on the roads have risen to a dangerous level.

 The question about the flood of traffic on narrow roads of Chitral is what bothers everyone on the roads with their vehicles or pedestrians. The traffic police men do stand on the roads, stop vehicles and impose fine on each driver once a month. This is like a customs duty not a fine. Every driver pays a small amount of money, gets a chit and is free for one month. This collection of revenue is illegal and self assumed authority of the traffic police or their highups. The fine is, actually, meant for those who violate the rules. It is not a monthly Thangi to be extorted from each driver. They don’t care about the following  kind of drivers:

• The Mazda drivers who driver at over 60 km per hour on the narrow and dangerous roads and have been causing accidents and precious lives are lost. These are the most dangerous drivers on the roads of Chitral and there should be a lower speed limit for them. These drivers must be medically checked for use of drugs and to get proof from their blood tests. Their driving speed is good for them but too dangerous the others on the roads. We dread them as lunatics, not normal human beings.
• The Ghogai drivers who are not far behind the Mazda drivers also need strict control.
• The One wheelers, the racing bike drivers should be controlled and punishments must be awarded to them for over speeding on narrow roads.
• The drivers of the vehicles which are in the use of line departments. They are also fond of over speeding. Their minds have become diabolical for being the driver of a govt. vehicle so they take it as their legal right to take to road at abnormal speed. I would ask the DCs of both the districts to issue instructions to the heads of the departments concerned.

1. The drivers of the NGOs who least care about human lives and fly at high speed and pose threat to human lives.

Since the purchase of vehicles by Chitralis has had its psychic complex from the past and the roads have not been improved according to the number of vehicles so congestion, traffic jam, overtaking, ignorance of many chicken drivers have to be regularized by traffic police so we all of us have got to be cooperative in this regard or will lose precious lives.