WHILE the common man suffers from just about everything in Karachi, traffic police adds to the misery of the people, harassing them with their strange and unprofessional conduct. The worst part of the story is that they are not checked and punished by their superiors.

One can see more than half-a-dozen traffic policemen at the Quaid-i-Azam House Museum intersection, stopping cars for one reason or the other on a daily basis.

Recently I was at this spot one afternoon. As soon as the cars started moving on the green light from the Museum towards the Metropole Hotel intersection, a sub-inspector came in the middle of the road and signalled a car to stop. As the officer was in front of the car, the driver could not move, and this blocked the whole traffic. Soon, the sub-inspector with a maroon armband yelled at the driver, asking why the car had dirt on it. The car had a thin layer of dirt which can be seen on most vehicles because of air pollution in the city.

The gentleman on the driver’s seat obviously looked baffled on this strange query. Before he could speak, the officer asked the flabbergasted driver why the colour of one of the car fenders was faded. Following this, the gentleman was ordered to park his car near the U-turn where three more car drivers were being ‘questioned’.

This left me wondering how come a car needing a wash and a slight paint job on its fender could be considered a serious traffic violation. It was obviously to harass the driver and let him go after a ‘deal’.

I have seen women and senior citizens being detained at this spot in blistering heat on one pretext or the other. I have also seen high-speed four-wheelers with tinted windows driven recklessly at the same location, but no one dares to stop them.

It is incomprehensible why a whole battalion of traffic policemen has been deputed at an intersection which has traffic signals, while a couple of constables would have been enough.

The people of Karachi already face myriads of problems. Such tactics by traffic police only compound people’s misery. Will the Karachi traffic police chief check what his staff has been doing at this spot and elsewhere in the city?

Jamshaid Ahmad
Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2020