E-Paper
Pune traffic department cracks down on violators
Department has collected Rs 6.7 crore more in fines as compared to last year
The traffic department of Pune police have collected over Rs 6.7 crore in fine as compared to 2017 with two weeks to go before the year concludes. Under the leadership of Tejaswi Satpute, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), traffic, the department is also keeping a meticulous track of all actions and drives undertaken by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC).
This year till November, the Pune traffic branch collected a fine Rs 37,45,04,900 for 16,73,010 cases pertaining to various traffic rule violations. Compared to this, in 2017, the police collected Rs 30,75,04,900 and the number of cases too was Rs 16.38 lakh. One of the main reasons for excess fine collection has been active traffic policing as well as CCTVs installed across the city, which captures the violations.
“We are not taking action only to increase the revenue, the traffic branch is doing its job in a more holistic way to improve the traffic in the city,” said Tejaswi Saptpute, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), traffic. On the issue of better coordination with the PMC, Satpute said she is keeping a track of all the communication (paper trail) with PMC.
Following her suggestions, the Pune civic body has painted over 100 zebra crossing at various chowks in the city.The development comes along with various other initiatives launched by the past as well as the current deputy commissioner of police for traffic.
Meanwhile, along with a major reshuffle in the police administration, a part of the area under Pune police and Pune rural police was put together and a new police commissionerate was established in Pimpri Chinchwad. The new police establishment has reduced the area and the working staff.
“The strength of the department has gone down as compared to last year due to the establishment of Pimpri-Chinchwad police commissionerate. So as the manpower and area have reduced the workload has also shifted,” she said.
She also pointed out that the machines provided to the traffic policemen deployed on roads for collecting fines had stopped functioning well in the past few months. “The Idea-Vodafone merger has affected the network in a bad way. There was also hardware damage. The devices are 3G while the network has jumped to 4G. Therefore, we decided to hire 250 more machines, in addition to the existing 350 with the same specification until better machines are launched by the government in the coming year,” said DCP Satpute. Within 15-20 days of resuming the fine collection, the collection crossed Rs 1 crore.
Therefore, as the new year approaches, the traffic police department is also gearing up to deal with the ever-increasing traffic woes of Pune.
