Is the traffic wing of the DMP havingfun at people's expense?
Sunday, 30 May 2010
The traffic wing of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) launched its altered system of traffic management with signaling lights -- which it should have done long ago -- almost half a year back. The automatic signaling system was suddenly imposed without repairing and making fully functional the signaling lights at many places. Besides, the lights that were operable were not properly synchronised. This led to a chaos in the system with the traffic policemen resorting to their old and unchanged behaviour of stopping traffic movement for irrationally long periods of time where the lights were not working but quick changes in places where the automatic devices functioned. This asymmetry was compounded further by the signalling lights in some places not changing at an interval of a two or three minutes but sometimes taking longer such as ten or fifteen minutes. Thus, the fallouts from all these created a worse mess that increased people's suffering.
The DMP pledged later that they would take corrective actions and put things in order. The synchronisation of the signaling lights was more or less carried out later on. This contributed to commuters getting some benefits for a while. But for the past several months or so the earlier hodge-podge appears to have returned. Even the signaling lights that were repaired have gone out of orders in some places again for unknown reasons and no move is visible to make them functional again. Traffic policemen are seen resuming their manual signaling there keeping traffic immobile for unusually long stretches of time.
In some places, this is bizarre; the signalling lights are found changing at intervals of ten or fifteen minutes which rob them of their usefulness. Furthermore, the traffic policemen are found prone to starting cases nowadays in greater number against the travelling people for justified or in many instances unjustified grounds of violation of rules when the former themselves would be guilty, if charged, for not enforcing the rules they themselves had declared on behalf of the government. It was underlined by DMP's traffic wing that different categories of vehicles would have to travel in paths specified for them on the roads. But nobody is seen enforcing this rule with any care all the time but some policemen are seen all on a sudden stopping violators and penalising them. But this is no way of either restraining the violators or educating them. The rule needs to be enforced all the time to habituate people and keep them habituated to obeying it.
It seems on the whole as if the DMP's traffic wing is playing a joke on the people. In the name of better traffic regulation, they are only contributing to making the conditions worse.
Who will answer why they chose to introduce a system without fine-tuning it in the first place? After introducing it, why they are not addressing the factors which are not allowing the benefits of the changes to be delivered ?
People of Dhaka are in great agony and the economy is suffering huge losses every day from the very bad traffic management which seems to be more due to man-made factors than the familiar excuses of too many vehicles, insufficient roads, etc. The desired improvement in traffic movement calls for singularly making the traffic managers themselves truly dedicated to doing their jobs with real sincerity and carrying out of supportive activities such as mending the signalling lights and synchronizing them at the fastest. Under the circumstances, attention needs to be paid urgently to these needs from the highest level of the government.
Ifteqar Ahmed
Dhanmondhi,
Dhaka
The DMP pledged later that they would take corrective actions and put things in order. The synchronisation of the signaling lights was more or less carried out later on. This contributed to commuters getting some benefits for a while. But for the past several months or so the earlier hodge-podge appears to have returned. Even the signaling lights that were repaired have gone out of orders in some places again for unknown reasons and no move is visible to make them functional again. Traffic policemen are seen resuming their manual signaling there keeping traffic immobile for unusually long stretches of time.
In some places, this is bizarre; the signalling lights are found changing at intervals of ten or fifteen minutes which rob them of their usefulness. Furthermore, the traffic policemen are found prone to starting cases nowadays in greater number against the travelling people for justified or in many instances unjustified grounds of violation of rules when the former themselves would be guilty, if charged, for not enforcing the rules they themselves had declared on behalf of the government. It was underlined by DMP's traffic wing that different categories of vehicles would have to travel in paths specified for them on the roads. But nobody is seen enforcing this rule with any care all the time but some policemen are seen all on a sudden stopping violators and penalising them. But this is no way of either restraining the violators or educating them. The rule needs to be enforced all the time to habituate people and keep them habituated to obeying it.
It seems on the whole as if the DMP's traffic wing is playing a joke on the people. In the name of better traffic regulation, they are only contributing to making the conditions worse.
Who will answer why they chose to introduce a system without fine-tuning it in the first place? After introducing it, why they are not addressing the factors which are not allowing the benefits of the changes to be delivered ?
People of Dhaka are in great agony and the economy is suffering huge losses every day from the very bad traffic management which seems to be more due to man-made factors than the familiar excuses of too many vehicles, insufficient roads, etc. The desired improvement in traffic movement calls for singularly making the traffic managers themselves truly dedicated to doing their jobs with real sincerity and carrying out of supportive activities such as mending the signalling lights and synchronizing them at the fastest. Under the circumstances, attention needs to be paid urgently to these needs from the highest level of the government.
Ifteqar Ahmed
Dhanmondhi,
Dhaka