LAHORE: Newly appointed Chief Traffic Officer (CTO) DIG Athar Waheed has discontinued the previous punitive approach of the outgoing CTO of generating revenue by imposing heavy fines on traffic violations and came up with a new policy to shift the entire focus towards traffic management and encroachment besides reorganisation of his force.

For reorganising the human resource at the supervisory slots, he has written to Lahore capital police officer (CCPO) to help provide the divisional SPs to the city traffic police on the pattern of the other police wings of the provincial capital which were operating with six SPs each.

Currently, the traffic police of the city are being managed by two SPs only.

Similarly, during his last few important meetings, the CTO has identified 58 chronic traffic choking points and over 800 encroachment spots of the major roads, giving a gigantic task to the newly constituted teams to clear them at any cost.

The main points were identified on The Mall, Jail Road, Main Boulevard of Gulberg, Defence Mor, Lahore Canal, Faisal Town, Model Town Link Road, Ravi Road, Davies Road, Mozang, Iqbal Town, Shaukat Khanum Road and other such busiest arteries of the city.

Forms teams to clear choking points, encroachments on major roads

An official said the new traffic police chief has fielded teams and ordered them strictly to reject “any influence from any quarter” or the mafias behind these illegal activities and clear all the choked roads of the city within a week or so.

He said soon after assuming his charge as the CTO, Mr Waheed has marked first Ferozepur Road, one of the heavily encroached longest and leading roads of the city, which was contributing a lot to add burden of traffic load on other adjoining arteries of the city, including the Canal Road, Jail Road and Gulberg.

He said the CTO believed that the traffic congestion on the Ferozepur Road was one of the main contributing factors in traffic mismanagement of the city.

For this purpose, he fielded multiple teams and each time comprised 20 wardens and assistants.

Each team, headed by a DSP, was given instructions/tasks to clear ‘all kinds of encroachments’ on the Ferozepur Road besides the traffic mess points by Sunday.

They were directed to eliminate the illegal parking and temporary and permanent encroachments.

For the permanent encroachments, the CTO has sought the help of the district government and other relevant departments, including police, for coordination to launch frequent operations.

The official said Mr Waheed issued strict instructions to the wardens to abandon the campaigns and the practices of imposing heavy fines on the motorists, particularly, the motorcyclists.

He declared it an unnecessary and a rubbish approach, saying the traffic management had been the prime task and responsibility of the traffic police.

The CTO believed that effective coordination with the Punjab Safe City Authorities (PSCA) would be the best and decisive way to discourage traffic violations rather than giving a task to the wardens to perform the same by rounding up the motorist on the roads.

“For me, the traffic management is the top priority, rather than issuing fine tickets to generate revenue for the national exchequer,” CTO Athar Waheed told Dawn.

He said he had devised a strategy to reorganise the human resources of the city traffic police to get desired results.

Unfortunately, he said, the previous regime had been using the punitive approach, ignoring the prime responsibility of ensuring traffic flow on the city’s roads.

“My focus will be clearance of all the city roads with a prime objective of bringing relief to the motorists and other citizens of the second largest city of the country,” he said.

He lamented that the traffic police had only two SPs to deal with the heavy load of work while the other police organisations of the provincial capital, including operations and investigation wings, were working with six divisional SPs each.

He said he had requested the CCPO for an increase of the number of the SPs for the city traffic police in order to improve the supervisory role besides taking many other measures to reorganise the human resource.

“I have directed the wardens to round up only those violators who have been issued E-tickets by the Safe City Authorities,” he said, adding that they had been given instructions not to stop the motorists just for the sake of generating revenue by issuing tickets.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2024