With the onset of festive season in the city, traffic snarls have become a regular feature. Moreover, the situation has worsened as the district administration decided to partially ease no-entry restrictions of heavy vehicles to city.
Commercial places like Sakchi, Burmamines, and Mango are the worst hit places. Police is facing tough times in controlling the traffic movement.
Concerned over rising cases of road mishaps, the East Singhbhum district administration had imposed no-entry restriction for heavy vehicles to the city from 6 am to 10 pm on July 29. The administration had issued directives that traffic regulation would continue till August 16 in view of the festive seasons and Independence Day function. However, since the implementation of this directive, truck and trailer owners and corporate groups including Tata Steel met the East Singhbhum Deputy Commissioner Amitabh Kaushal registering their protest citing loss to industries and business.
The district administration after discussion with corporate groups issued a directive on Saturday for easing of traffic curb between 2.30 pm to 5 pm to be effective from Monday. Earlier, the no-entry curbs on heavy vehicles were in three time slots: between 6am and 9am, keeping in mind school hours, 12 noon and 2.30pm and 5pm and 10.30 pm. With expansion programmes of Tata Steel and other companies, there has been a rise in the number of heavy vehicles. The pitiable road condition is also to be blamed as it often causes breakdown of vehicles. Moreover cases of mishaps have also shot up.
East Singhbhum deputy commissioner Amitabh Kaushal said that they had restricted the no-entry timings but several representations from industrial groups started demanding that if no-entry restrictions were not eased then they would suffer huge loss and might have to close down operations.
“We are keeping an eye on the situation and will do whatever is needed for streamlining of traffic with the available infrastructure,” the deputy commissioner added.
“Traffic management is one of the biggest challenges during the festive season. Traffic diversion which the traffic administration is talking off as part of arrangement during the important days is nothing but, doing the duty for the name sake,” said Aniket Kumar, an employee of a private bank.
A section of commuters also blamed the traffic department for its inability to control the situation.
“There would not have been such a chaos had there been traffic constables to manage the situation,” complained a commuter. Traffic police were deployed to control the
situation two hours after the jam began.