Sunday, April 22, 2007

IT firms shift gear; to man traffic

Employees Of IT Firm, Students, NGOs To Lend A Helping Hand To The Traffic Police

Hyderabad: The city’s traffic police department which has been groping in the dark on tackling the issue of staff shortage for long may finally see light at the end of the tunnel.

Information technology (IT) company employees, management students and NGOs are all set to don the role of ‘traffic managers’ and pitch in to help the department tide over the problem.
Recently, IT company Deloitte approached the department to permit all its employees in the city to assist in traffic regulation for one day, i.e. on May 2, M Punna Rao, additional commissioner of police (traffic) said.

Apart from distributing pamphlets to create an awareness on good driving habits, the company will also dole out gifts to motorists who abide by rules on that day.

The students of Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) have also sought to aid the department in a similar manner.

A non-governmental organisation (NGO) has also submitted a proposal to the traffic police and offered to recruit people to regulate traffic at various junctions in the city.

As per the proposal, the NGO will recruit 100 traffic managers and pay them too. A similar project is being executed by an auto major in Delhi whereby it pays traffic personnel recruited by it to assist the traffic police.

Rao added: “As of now, the traffic department is studying the proposal. We will also ask corporates, colleges and NGOs approaching us voluntarily with such requests, to conduct regular awareness programmes in their institutions. The department will allow the proposal to take shape but delimit the powers of such traffic managers.”

The traffic police officials, he said, are happy with the assistance pouring in their efforts to control the traffic. “When the public is involved in manning junctions and regulating traffic, they will learn about the dangers caused by violations like jumping signals. Hopefully, they themselves will abide by the traffic rules and pick up good driving habits. Such gestures will boost our morale and confidence too”.

A similar practice is prevalent in Chennai, where people of the city from various walks of life and professions work as traffic wardens. However, these wardens regulate traffic for a stipulated period, from one to three months.

As a gesture, members of The Art of Living distributed buttermilk packets to traffic personnel at various places in the city to beat the heat in summer. This could well be a sign of the things to come.

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