Whether the weather is hot, whether the weather is cool, they weather the weather with commitment and determination. They are perhaps the most-ignored lot of the policing fraternity, whose hard work remains unnoticed most of the times.
The traffic police are making all attempts to clean the mess on roads running special drives and making special efforts under the scorching sun and on days when the temperature is going north at the starting of the month of May.
The week started with maximum day temperature of 38 degree Celsius which is likely to go high in the coming days but the traffic police men are found working throught the day without even having the facility of a shed over their heads at most squares and crossovers in the city.
“It is very difficult to stand and work for 24 hour in hot weather. We sweat, get sun burns and fall sick due to heat,” said RK Paswan, a constable with traffic police. He also added that no post is there to stand in scorching sunlight.
“We don’t have choice but to be out in sun, shift duty can be arranged so that we can get some relief during summer season,” said Charitra Singh, another constable.
“We don’t even get time to eat and drink water during busy duty hours. In VIPs programmes we are supposed to come before the duty time,” said a senior traffic policeman.
Many others on duty at city squares said both signal lights and street lights were not working properly putting extra pressure on them. “It is very difficult to control vehicles like autorickshaws, bikes and four wheelers in such a condition,” said an ASI.
Thankfully, the senior officials seem to have put on their thinking caps and are willing to take some steps to ease the troubles of the traffic force. “We are planning to provide oxygen masks to traffic police to avoid inhalation of harmful gases as they have to stand for long duration in hot weather,” said Kartik S,SP (Traffic), Ranchi.
He said that pulmonary health check- up, which is related to lungs will be organized for traffic police in order to improve their health conditions because they do very tough job in summer.