The Motor Vehicles Department’s Safe Zone project for round-the-clock real-time monitoring of road corridors in the State to bring down the number of road accidents and fatalities has taken off with the department inducting Assistant Motor Vehicle Inspectors (AMVI).
The AMVIs selected by the Kerala Public Service Commission (PSC) were inducted into the MVD and 179 of the 187 selected have joined work since Thursday. The new recruits, after the initial orientation in the Transport Commissionerate, will undergo three months training at the Kerala Police Academy, Thrissur.
The 187 posts of AMVIs along with 65 posts of MVIs and 10 posts of Regional Transport Officers (RTO) were sanctioned by the government while approving the Safe Zone project, which will be under the exclusive Enforcement Wing headed by Joint Transport Commissioner, Enforcement, V. Suresh Kumar.
The enforcement wing, which now has only 625 personnel in the grade of the MVIs and AMVIs for 1.5 crore vehicles, including those from other States that ply across the State will get 51 more squads for real-time monitoring of all class of vehicles. The process to identify the MVIs and RTOs through cadre promotion is on.
As part of the Safe Zone scheme, control rooms will be set up in all districts for real-time monitoring and to ensure road discipline. The patrol vehicles, equipped with Global Positioning System, will provide feed to the control room and facilitate speedy relief in the event of an accident or vehicle breakdown.
Joint Transport Commissioner and Secretary, State Transport Authority, Rajeev Puthalath told The Hindu that 56 vehicles will be taken on lease for patrolling by the enforcement personnel. The vehicles will be leased after floating tenders.
The 14 offices in the districts where control rooms will be set up have been identified. Now, they have to be networked and equipped.
The patrol teams are in addition to the existing 34 squads of the MVD and 46 squads of the Kerala Police. The MVD is of the view that the additional 51 patrol teams will result in remarkable improvement in road safety and dip in fatalities on road corridors.
The resources are mobilised through the government and the Kerala Road Safety Authority (KRSA) that is partnering with the MVD. The initiative is on the basis of the recommendations of the Supreme Court-appointed committee on Road Safety and the KRSA.
