Ranchi police’s ambitious 8-day drive to develop traffic etiquette among Ranchiites has so far drawn a lukewarm response from some of the influential institutional stakeholders of the city’s traffic. As the police await the launch date, May 9, skepticism regarding success of the drive has started concerning people who are central to the programme.
The traffic awareness and education drive named ‘Parivartan’ aims to express the necessity of following laws and its positive effects on the lives of people thus translating the process of transformation into a continuous motion. A wide consultation was initiated by police for soliciting support from public-sector-undertakings and other institutions that interact with people directly.
“Self-initiative is missing. I could not communicate to all as I have my routine job also. What is more suprising is that even lead banks are missing in action and so far they are not anywhere in the picture. Banks regular interacts with customers but what they did is still not clear,” said SP-Traffic, Karthik S.
Although the meeting was called to bring all PSUs onboard the drive to improve traffic conditions just two organizations came forward to extend their support to police whereas others seem disinterested about the drive. According to SP-Traffic, Central Coalfields limited and MECON have come forward to join hands with the police and the latter is planning to organise road show with a media house to provide impetus to the drive. Nonetheless, the silence of remaining PSUs has disappointed police.
“They (representatives of PSUs) had said that they will discuss and then will let us know however no communication has been made by most of the representatives. Now I have decided to approach them once again,” added the SP-Traffic.
Notably, the programme will be conducted for 8-day and it will touch three aspects of traffic—engineering, education and enforcement—throughout the exercise. The drive which is claimed by police to be first of its kind for Ranchi will began with the unveiling of a logo on May 6 designed specifically for the movement followed by launch of the mission on May 9 where objectives and goals are likely to be readout and the drive is likely to culminate with an oath taking ceremony for general public to solicit support in the ambitious plan to address problems of traffic rule violations. The collaborative effort will be monitored and evaluated at later stage to ascertain achievements.
The plan to mend on-road manners include bringing school children in the project for promoting traffic sense through street plays and other interactive activities, propagating IVR (Interactive Voice Response) messages, jingles on radio probably in the voice of children appealing to their parents to wear safety gear before driving, informative conclaves by small groups for auto-drivers and other stakeholders of public transport system, rolling out vehicles (coined message-on-wheels) to disseminate information regarding traffic rules through participative activities like quizzes.