Shafqat Ali Watali is prominent police officer of state and currently IG Traffic Police.
In an exclusive interview with The News Kashmir , he talks to Farzana Mumtaz and Rameez Makhdoomi
How was the current impressive traffic management possible despite such problems before Darbar Move?
It is true that we faced lot of congestion and jams and people expected worse on eve of Darbar opening but devising an effective plan and more important implementing it has done wonders.
We believe in effective coordination and implementation to achieve sucess.
Traffic Department has been facing dearth of human resource .What is being done in that regard?
It is a fact that traffic department has faced shortage of manpower since many years but now we have got required number of human resource from police department which has solved our human resource problem.
Downtown is seemingly been ignored in terms of traffic police deployment.Your take?
Yes it is a serious issue as downtown has been having very less traffic police at its disposal .We are working on it and in a phased manner we will solve this issue and solve traffic problems of downtown.
Evening transport is another problem .What is traffic department doing in this regard ?
We cannot put every issue related to transport in the court of Traffic .The effective regulation and management of traffic is our main responsibility and departments like transport too has to work on the issues like evening transport availability via their human resource .
What is been done to regulate unauthorized parking, making more paid parkings especially of vehicles parked in front of shops?
It is a quiet big issue and all the departments like Municipal Corporation, SDA and ERA have a role to play in this regard .
We are identifying 28 parking spaces to ease the parking problems and make traders and others accountable for wrong parking.Shopkeepers should also introspect were to park and adopt car pooling.
Female drivers are hardly checked for licenses on scooty which is causing Traffic accidents .What is been done in this regard?.
With rising competition we have seen more females driving and we are devising plan to make the regulation paradigm more effective.
Are you planning to increase the number of CCtvs to improve traffic management ?
Yes to identify the traffic violators and manage traffic in a better way the traffic police department is increasing the number of CCTvs Cameras with collobration of allied deparments.
Tippers are causing lot of mess.What is being done in this regard?
Tipers are governed by the High Court rules and we have main problem with tipers that operate on freelance basis and at night time . Since we have less availability of traffic personnel at that time we are solving this issue in coordination with police department as they have solid presence at night time.
Shouldn’t you now employ more female traffic cops as number of women drivers are growing?
It is a good suggestion and we will look into this important suggestion.
In areas affected by Flyover will the traffic ness not worsen during upcoming festivties ?
We will chalk out the plan for these areas as the situation demand and we are looking into this aspect closely.
Women buses being boarded by male, what is being done in that regard?
We are trying to deal with this but let me state that on this issue and other issues we as a society should raise our conscience level and not always be ready to implement things when forced.
