IT takes too many to create a mess and so it is with the traffic in Rawalpindi.

It is a daily struggle for the citizens to move about and to rein in the disorder on the roads for the city managers.

Rawalpindi’s main arterial roads, despite their widening and underpasses and flyovers, witness frenzy traffic all day - and worse during the rush hours. Usually rapid and unplanned urbanisation are blamed for that.

However valid, that would be only partial truth. Where is the sense of common good and civic responsibility? Only that realisation on all sides, the citizens and the officialdom, can slowly bring order and prevent the messy situation sliding into a chaos.

Just disciplining public transport drivers, encroaching vendors, pedestrians and harassed traffic wardens — as is done by the city administrators near Faizabad interchange because a federal minister resides nearby — won’t change the waywardness of the road users.

These days the civic agencies and the city traffic police are seen very active in removing encroachments, discouraging public transporters from wrong parking to the patch of road at Faizabad clear, apparently for the fear of the minister.

“The traffic police have the job of keeping traffic moving smoothly. For that, the roads have to be free of encroachments, and beggars and other hindrances. It is the job of civic agencies remove encroachers and of the district police to arrest the beggars but we have to do it,” City Traffic Officer Syed Ishtiaq Hussain Shah said.

Each department doing its job responsibly alone can solve the traffic problem, not passing on the buck, he emphasised.

A few days ago, a large number of vendors blocked traffic in Dhoke Syedan area with their protest against the traffic wardens who had removed them from the road.

The protest ended in the retreat of traffic police.

A similar situation emerged in Satellite Town when the traffic police tried to remove vehicles wrongly parked outside a food outlet. Its owner complained to a local PML-N leader and he got his way.

Only last Tuesday, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan expressed displeasure over the traffic gridlock outside his residence and five members of traffic staff performing duty at Faizabad were suspended.

They were Inspector Saeed Jilani and traffic wardens Muhammad Amir, Afzal Ahmed, Muhammad Ikhlaq and Mumtaz Hussain.

Rawalpindi being his political home ground, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan used to take keen interest in the development of the garrison city.

But since assuming the charge of federal interior ministry, he is more focused on national issues.

The city is left to the care of civic authorities who seem unable to tackle the major problems of the burgeoning city, such as the city’s choked roads.

Billions of rupees from public tax money were spent during the ruling PML-N’s last tenure in Punjab on improving the roads of Rawalpindi but the traffic problems stay as bad as ever.

Bumper-to-bumper gridlocks are still a common sight on Benazir Bhutto Road, which was widened, and provided flyovers and an underpass.

City civic authorities cite the on-going road and railway bridge construction at Marrir as an excuse.

That, however, does not sound soothing to commuters caught in traffic jams stretching from Liaquat Bagh chowk to Marrir chowk and Liaquat Road. Worse are the patients being driven to hospitals in the area.

Drivers of ambulances and patients’ relatives suffer mental anguish as they wait helplessly inside stranded vehicles for the way to clear.

“It is one of the major causes of accidents. Inching through a traffic jam can reduce driver’s patience and the mental stress they suffer can cause a range of diseases,” said Dr Khalid Latif working in a hospital.

Mohammad Bilal, a university student, feels “no inspiration” on seeing the road development work at Marrir by the provincial government after traveling on the inner city’s dilapidated roads.

“If the district government gets no government funds for poor areas, it should collect donations from the suffering citizens to get patch work done on the damaged roads,” he suggested.

A housewife, who did not wish to be named, was equally angry at the neglect.

“It is no less than mental torture for a diabetic patient (herself) to travel on damaged roads and then get stuck in traffic jams to reach the hospital or a doctor for treatment,” she said.