Punjab government to improve Lahore’s traffic

Traffic management will be implemented as ‘model project’ in the city

LAHORE: The Punjab government is working to improve traffic management in the city with the help of Turkey which also assisted the province in devising intelligent patrolling system through Dolphin Squad and improving law and order capacity-building through Anti-Riot Police Response Unit.

A delegation from Turkey had a meeting with Lahore Chief Traffic Officer SSP Rai Ijaz Ahmad, who briefed the delegation about the administrative structure, existing resources and reforms in the city traffic police.



Earlier, the delegation visited the city in January this year. This time around, they visited to work on the first phase in order to redesign traffic management completely. The traffic management will be implemented as ‘model project’ in Lahore that will be introduced throughout the province.



Ijaz told the delegation about history of different steps taken for management, resources of city traffic police and challenges faced by them. He said that the present structure of City Traffic Police Lahore (CTPL) was introduced in 2006 and before that traffic sergeants were managing traffic on roads in the city. Later, they were replaced by wardens, young graduates, recruited with a vision to behave with public politely.

The CTO informed the delegation that Lahore has the population of over 12 million people and strength of wardens is about 2,500. The CTPL besides facing dearth of manpower faced problems due to involvement of different departments also.



The Turkish model will focus on integration of all the concerned departments.

CTPL Spokesperson Syed Hammad Raza told The Express Tribune that integration of the concerned departments in a systematic way was mandatory for implementation and functioning of traffic management at ground level.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, July 7^th, 2017.