Nine towing cranes that the traffic police had acquired in April 2011 after doing away with the services of around 25 hired cranes, have proved too inadequate for the city.
The fear of towing cranes is fast vanishing from the minds of Ahmedabad's vehicle owners. The reason is that the 9 towing cranes that the traffic police had acquired in April 2011 after doing away with the services of around 25 hired cranes, have proved too inadequate for the city.
In April 2011, the traffic police had acquired 9 towing cranes of their own and done away with the use of cranes and private contractors.
The traffic department had decided that two traffic policemen and a driver will be assigned duty on each crane along with 2-3 labourers. The labourers were considered necessary as they would help the policemen in towing away vehicles parked in 'no parking zones'.
Unfortunately, not only did the 9 cranes prove inadequate for the task at hand, the labourers assigned to each crane rarely turned up.
In November 2011, the traffic department realised that it needed more cranes and also more staff to operate them if the menace of irresponsible parking was to be tackled effectively. Hence, DCP (traffic-west), Nilesh Jajadia, prepared a proposal to assign one more labourer to each crane and sent it for approval.
A proposal was also sent to the higher authorities for purchase of 16 more towing cranes. Unfortunately, nothing was done about the proposal. In fact, both the proposals are yet to be approved.
"We are still waiting for the proposals to be approved. Till then, we will continue our operations with the cranes and manpower we have at the moment," said Jajadia.
Currently, there are only 9 cranes for the whole city and the traffic police are having a tough time clearing congested places. The paucity of laborers further aggravates their problem.
"We don't have any labourers with us. Hence we are unable to take away the vehicles. We can only go to the spot and fine the vehicle owners but we can't tow away the vehicles," said an on duty traffic PSI in Satellite area.
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