QUETTA: The traffic police impounded 87 smuggled vehicles worth Rs80 million in 2016 and handed them over to the customs authorities besides serving Rs4.588 million worth of challans on 139,566 vehicles.

This was stated by the Senior Superintendent of Police, Hamid Shakeel, at a news briefing on the Quetta Traffic Police’s annual performance.

He said that traffic police also took action against 316 vendors besides taking into custody 2,178 unregistered motorcycles.

He said that despite shortage of resources and manpower, traffic police personnel were trying their best to serve the masses and come up to their expectations.

He appealed to elected representatives of Quetta district to provide resources from their development funds to the traffic police to ensure better and smooth flow of traffic.

“Elected representatives could provide necessary equipment to them from their own development funds,” Mr Shakeel said.

He said that Balochistan Assembly Speaker Raheela Hameed Khan Durrani and MPA Tahir Mehmood Khan had provided offices, road spikes and T-barriers to traffic police from their special funds.

He requested the government to set up a traffic engineering bureau in the provincial capital and take steps for ending shortage of manpower in the department.

He said that increasing traffic on the roads and mounting population had made it necessary to set up a traffic engineering bureau. Besides, he said, the department needed vehicles, motorcycles and modern traffic tools.

He said that building of plazas, showrooms and departmental stores in violation of the traffic code had compounded the traffic problems.

He said that for a population of three million and 500,000 vehicles, there should be 3,500 policemen in the traffic police department, but against this requirement, if only 2,000 men were provided to the department, it would solve the problem to a great extent.

He said that 22 traffic policemen died on duty and paid rich tribute to them.

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2017