Pindi police beef up warden deployment near Faizabad

Traffic police officers have been told to keep a vigilant eye on suspicious vehicles

RAWALPINDI: With the protest at Faizabad entering its third week, the traffic police in Rawalpindi has apparently accepted the inevitability of a traffic mess on the main intersection between the twin cities and has decided to beef up the deployment of wardens to better direct frustrated and stranded commuters.

The Rawalpindi City Traffic Police (CTP) on Monday said that it was trying to regulate traffic on the roads of the city, making special arrangements to control the traffic flow and mitigating the traffic mess near Faizabad.

Speaking to the media on Monday, Rawalpindi Chief Traffic Officer (CTO) Yousaf Ali Shahid said that they had devised a traffic plan to manage the traffic in the city and near Faizabad.

In this regard, Shahid said that they had increased the number of traffic wardens deployed around that area. In this regard, the CTP had decided to reassign 30 Traffic Assistants from Attock, Chakwal and Jhelum to traffic duties near Faizabad.

Traffic police officers, he said, have been told to keep a vigilant eye on suspicious vehicles commuting between the two cities and those arriving from other cities.

“Strict action, in accordance with the law, has also been ordered against vehicles with tinted glasses or those moving in the city without number plates,” Shahid said.

Moreover, the CTO said that leaves of all traffic wardens had been cancelled so that they could deploy the maximum number of wardens on the city’s roads to manage the traffic. Further, all traffic officers and wardens have been directed to remain at their posts, particularly during peak hours, so that the traffic does not jam, he added.

Apart from these efforts, Shahid urged motorists to help out the police do their job by not parking their vehicles in no-parking zones since they could lead to traffic jams the roads. He said that commuters can register their complaints on the 24-hour traffic police helpline 1915.

Hundreds of followers of the wheelchair-bound cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi have been camped at the Faizabad intersection — the main link between the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad — since November 8. They have been demanding the removal of Law Minister Zahid Hamid, who they claim was responsible for the now-withdrawn change into Khatm-e-Nabuwat declaration.

Their camps and a security cordon by security officials — reinforced using shipping containers — has left Faizabad virtually impassable. As a result, commuters have had to take alternative routes where they get caught up in jams.

Commuting from Rawalpindi to Islamabad or vice versa normally takes no more than an hour. But now, it takes around three hours to complete the journey due to the long detours commuters have to take apart from navigating clogged roads.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 21^st, 2017.