Two more traffic police stations to be set up

The Mangalore Police Commissionerate has proposed to the Government to set up two more traffic police stations at Padil and Surathkal, said Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh. At present, the city has two traffic stations at Kadri and Bunder.

He told The Hindu that the Police Department had recruited 40 constables to be posted under the Commissionerate. They were undergoing training. Once they were back on duty, their services would help manage traffic, he said. The Commissionerate now has around 100 personnel exclusively for traffic management.

Mr. Singh said that the Commissionerate had identified 16 new traffic junctions in the city for installing traffic signal. They would be later maintained by the police. He said he had suggested to the Mangalore City Corporation to open a traffic engineering cell at the civic body. The cell should function in co-ordination with the traffic police for laying roads, repairing, and digging roads. It would come in handy for traffic management.

Referring to traffic issues in the city, the Commissioner said they could not be solved by “using a magic wand”. Unscientific openings of medians on newly-laid concrete roads were a major hurdle. Limitations pertained to narrow roads and lack of parking places on high rise commercial buildings, apartments, and roadsides.

The scope of the Commissionerate was vast including rural areas. Hence the police would have to focus on prevention and investigation of crime and maintenance of law and order along with traffic management, he said.

Mr. Singh said the police had installed 40 closed circuit television cameras in the city. Traffic violations were monitored at the control room of CCTV cameras and actions was taken. The Commissioner said that the police had been taking action against drinking and driving, riding without helmets, and triple riding. Hence accidents had come down, he said.

He denied that the police were neglecting the main city as far as traffic management was concerned. It was not proper to point fingers only at the police for traffic issues. Traffic management required involvement of different agencies, he said. The Commissioner said that Mangalore City Corporation should mark zebra crossings with strong rubber paints, construct bus bays, and mark stop-lines at signals.