LAHORE: As many as 720 officials were deputed on 24 thoroughfares of the city for traffic management, cleanliness and to take action against encroachments etc.

Commissioner retired Capt Muhammad Usman held a meeting at the Town Hall here on Saturday also attended by Deputy Commissioner Umar Sher Chattha, Chief Traffic Officer (CTO) Muntazir Mehdi, SSP (operations) Mustansar Feroze and Chief Corporation Officer Syed Ali Abbas Bukhari.

The administration deputed teams comprising employees of different departments on each road and tasked them with traffic management, action against encroachments, maintaining cleanliness and parking spaces. All the team members will also be allotted uniform.

The teams will work in coordination with district administration, corporation, LDA, PHA, Police, Traffic Police, Parking Authority and LTC. Officials of these departments will jointly conduct the necessary operations.

The Safe City Authority (SCA) was tasked with monitoring the working of these teams and officials. The team heads are authorised to lodge complaints over different types of violations and cases will also be registered on their directions.

The commissioner said that all the officers called to attend the meeting were sensitised about the importance of the tasks assigned to them.

“A permanent solution should be devised to check encroachments and action should be taken so that no one could again block the roads,” he said.

DC Chattha said officials of eight departments would jointly launch an operation against encroachments as there was no more room to widen the city roads.

He said Lahore would be developed as a model city.

Police operations SSP said the police officials would facilitate the teams and register cases against violators on their complaints.

Meanwhile, the commissioner also presided over a meeting at the SCA headquarters on traffic management and cleanliness of the city.

He ordered targeted monitoring of 24 city roads for traffic issues and cleanliness.

Mr Usman said one-way rule’s violation, wrong parking and dumping building debris should be reported in time and the violators should be identified.

He said the traffic management plan for Nishter town and Data Darbar was ready and the SCA should help maintain the traffic flow.

Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2022