Kerala - Kochi   

Public ire mounting against enforcement agencies

KOCHI: Public ire is mounting against the police and Motor Vehicles (MV) Department over their inability to prevent workers of private buses and goods carriers from taking law into their hands.

Thursday’s incident at Champakkara in the Vytilla-Pettah route, when a recklessly-driven private bus rammed a bike from behind, throwing off the young rider, following which he was run over by a private bus coming from the opposite direction, shows that bus workers ignore traffic rules.

“I have not come across a single instance of the police taking action against private bus workers,” said Shibu S. Rajan, a city resident.

The police do not maintain statistics about the number of people killed in accidents involving private buses in Kochi each year. But it is certain that it would match the number of people killed in accidents involving Blueline buses in New Delhi (95 this year). This is because private buses that ply in Kochi are involved in at least one in three fatal accidents that take place in the city, despite their number being just 1,200 (not even a per cent of the total vehicle population of Kochi). The fatalities caused by goods carriers, mainly tipper lorries, too are a cause for concern. Both the traffic police and the Motor Vehicles Department said that they do not have enough manpower to carry out rule-enforcement work.

Alarmed at the series of accidents caused by private buses, the traffic police introduced complaint cards, which are available with all traffic policemen. They come in pi nk colours for complaints abo ut private buses, in yellow for autorickshaws and in white for the help of women who wa nt to register incidents of mis behaviour in public places.

The police also plan to open five new punching cabins — one in Ravipuram and two each in Kalamassery and Thripunithura, to act as a check on reckless driving by private buses.

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