Hyderabad: Of late, the city traffic police has turned into a revenue generating department. It had collected Rs 200 crore through the challans during the past six months.
The department which was supposed to facilitate the citizens by ensuring smooth traffic on city roads is becoming an important source of government’s revenue.
The citizens’ impression is that the old whistle and baton-wielding traffic police was much better than their current avatar.
The personnel of the traffic police are more interested in clicking the pictures of the traffic violators than removing the traffic jams from the city signals and junctions.
The traffic police do not take any action to curb accidents and encroachment of footpaths which is creating huge inconvenience for the pedestrians.
Around 340 junctions in the city have traffic signals. The signal at Nampally circle was recently removed and there is no constable here after 10 p.m.
The traffic bottlenecks and traffic jams have become the order of the day on the city roads. To reach Nanal Nagar from Masab Tank flyover vehicles needed more than 20 minutes.
The city police is experimenting with the British and US traffic police systems on the city roads. However, some experts deem that such an experiment is difficult to succeed in the City’s three commissionerates.
There are more than 12 lakh pedestrians who use footpaths in the City which is becoming perilous to use due to unhindered encroachments.
There are around 10,000 km of small and big roads in the City. The main busy roads are 2000 km.
The number of vehicles in the city is 70 lakh out of which 50 lakh vehicles are always found on this city roads.
The number of traffic police personnel is 4900 and the number of CCTV cameras is 3 lakhs. Every year around 800 persons become victims of road accidents.
It is high time the city traffic police pay more attention to make the journey smooth on the City roads rather than merely collecting fines from the citizens.
