KARACHI: Campaign against errant drivers from today
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Sept 29: Police, on the provincial home minister’s directive, are launching a campaign from Friday against violation of traffic signals. During the campaign, anyone violating the signals would be detained in a lock-up for at least eight hours. The Minister, Rauf Siddiqui, has asked traffic police to put a check on the increasing violation of traffic rules, especially traffic signals.
Presiding over a meeting in his office, he said that males must not be allowed to travel in females’ compartments of public transport. He advised people to call on ‘15’ for lodging a complaint against transport operators.
He impressed upon the city police chief and DIG Traffic to enforce traffic laws strictly to check any violation. Drivers of heavy and long vehicles should be made to keep their vehicle in the appropriate lane and leave one lane clear for smaller vehicles.
DIG Traffic Falak Khurshid said that traffic police would use all available means to implement the directive. He said that violators of traffic signals would be arrested under section 99 of the Motor Vehicle Ordinance (MVO) and made to pay fine for the offence.
The arrested drivers would be released only on personal bond even after paying the fine. He hoped that the effective campaign and punishment to defiant drivers would help establish writ of law viz-a-viz observance of traffic rules.
President of the Karachi Transport Ittehad Irshad Bokhari appreciated the campaign and stressed on an even-handed approach to ensure success of the campaign. He elaborated by saying that police action should not be aimed against commercial drivers only.
“In most cases, an offence is committed by a commercial driver but punishment is suffered by the vehicle-owner, i.e. transport operator. This is the reason why drivers do not care about traffic rules,” he explained while welcoming the proposed action against drivers.
