The city police have started redeploying the available strength of home guards in busy points of the city.
The initiative comes as a result of the frequent appeals made by some of the civic organisations and clubs about the struggle students and senior citizens have to go through to cross the roads during peak hours.
“Earlier too, the main function of home guards was to control the traffic. But now, we are redeploying them in such a way to cover most of the city,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police K.B. Venugopal.
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He said the redeployment did not require any additional recruitment. The process was found effective, especially after the re-opening of schools.
The new traffic experiment was to post at least 10 home guards within one kilometre stretch of the major city roads. Their presence would be in addition to the city’s two traffic police wings — Kozhikode North and Kozhikode South. An effective rotation system, too, was being followed by the home guards in such a way that their services would be available round-the-clock.
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Till very recently, the main duty of home guards was to ensure flawless traffic at important traffic junctions, crowded streets and selected zebra crosses.
There were just a few of the personnel along important points of national and State highways to assist pedestrians. The recent redployment had most benefitted the Kozhikode-Kannur stretch of the National Highway.
Now the service of home guards was readily available at all the junctions and it also covered premises of major educational institutions, automatic signal points, and bridges where compulsory traffic control was in force.
According to officials, Kozhikode district currently had a strength of 400 home guards who rendered their services within the limits of 13 city police stations.