A major traffic awareness drive has begun in city to encourage school students to follow traffic rules. The rigorous checking drive that kicked off from Tuesday emphasised on wearing helmets while making the students aware about all traffic rules covering all localities under various police stations jurisdiction.
In the drive police caught 362 people riding bikes without helmets and recovered fine amounting to Rs 1,56,100 from them. Parents of 138 kids were called in the police stations and 34 vehicles were seized. Police has directed proceedings against 43 vehicle owners.
“The special drive involved all police stations and their Officer in charges. All vehicles around the schools used by the students were immediately seized and brought to police stations informing the guardians about it. Riders recklessly driving on city routes were immediately nabbed by PCR vans or tiger mobiles. All the Officer-In-Charge (OC) coordinated with the Traffic OC and collected fine under the senior officials’ supervision,” said Traffic SP, Sanjay Ranjan Singh.
Meanwhile, the Department of School Education and literacy has also instructed school authorities to appoint a nodal officer/teacher in their schools for imparting education on traffic rules among the students with immediate effect.
Ironically, the communiqué sent by the Department of School Education and literacy few months back to all school principals they are yet to ensure comaplince of the notice. The notice was released in January 2017 but the District Education Officer has yet not received the list of school teachers from any private or government schools.
“After receiving the notification from the State government to immediately take action to curb road mishaps and plan immediate plan of action for road safety, the letter was sent to all schools but no serious step was taken,” said, District Education Officer (DEO), Ratan Mahawar.
“looking at an initiative taken up by the traffic police department recently, the education department has again sent a reminder to all school principals and within a week, both government and private school heads must submit the list of teachers appointed by schools to impart training to students on road safety,” added Mahawar.
In an attempt to curtail road mishaps and make students aware about the traffic rules, Secretary, Department of School Education and literacy, Aradhana Patnaik had also instructed the school principals earlier to conduct training programme along with the special classes on road safety but none of the schools adopted the concept.
As per the DEO, after finalising the list, special training will be given to all the teachers under the supervision of District Transportation Officer (DTO). On the other hand, most of the schools have stated that they are in the process of deploying a teacher for creating awareness on traffic and the list will be submitted to the district administration on stimulated time.