February 03, 2008	Sunday	Muharram 24, 1429

LAHORE, Feb 2: Trauma Centres will be constructed at Chakri and Bhera on Lahore-Islamabad Motorway (M-I) to deal with accident cases while night-vision cameras have been placed to control speeding at night.

National Highways and Motorway Police (NH&MP) Inspector-General Muhammad Raffat Pasha said this while talking to reporters at NH&MP DIG (Central) Office on Saturday. He also presented the annual performance report for the year 2007 on the occasion.

The inspector-general said the NH&MP had gained good reputation because of excellent working environment and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had chosen the department for case study for being single non-funding department by any international organisation in the South Asia.

Pasha said the officers were being sent abroad for better training, adding training on trauma handling was imparted to the officers in Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Hospital, Karachi, and Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Islamabad.

He claimed the motorway police had helped reduce crime rate by over 82 per cent and accident rate by over 74 per cent.

Responding to a question, he said their response time to reach any accident spot was less than 5 minutes, adding video filming of the passengers in public transport helped a lot in reducing the crime rate.

He further said that lost and found article service had also been launched to help the commuters. To a question, he said the VIP culture had been eliminated on the highways and motorways.

E-toll system had been started on motorway with the help of Nadra and it would be expanded on all other highways in near future, he said.

To a query, Pasha said NH&MP had imparted training to Islamabad police and traffic wardens of Punjab and now some foreign countries had also requested for the training.

According to the performance report, the NH&MP seized a total of 58 weapons of different make and kind along with 944 rounds and 27 magazines of different calibre during 2007.