As many as 100 inspectors hired by Lahore Transport Company (LTC), who have completed their three months of training at Police Training Centre Chung, are still waiting for their posting to manage PSV vehicles, Pakistan Today learnt on Tuesday.
LTC sources said that in January 2011, LTC hired these men with master’s degrees to regulate and enforce PSV vehicles on city roads to facilitate the citizens. Sources said that these men waited for about six months till June 2011 for their training. In June, before the start of their training, they were told that they would be given two-month training but later the trainers extended their training for another month.
During the training, hired inspectors were told by the authorities that they would soon be deployed on the city roads to manage PSV transport but they were not deployed. LTC sources said that the three-month training of the LTC inspectors should have completed by the end of August, however inspectors are still waiting for further directions. Few hired inspectors, on anonymity, told Pakistan Today that they faced a six-month delay in their training because of lack of space at the police training school, and now after the completion of their training another waiting session had started.
They said that on Monday, few of their seniors visited them at the training school and told them that they need not worry about their future. Inspectors quoted their seniors that they had the power to extend their training period up to six months. Newly-appointed LTC inspectors said that their seniors had earlier devised their training program in a manner that inspectors had to spend two months at Police Training School Chung and one month as trainee inspectors with already deployed LTC inspectors.
Inspectors said that they had undergone five months of training: three months at Chung, one month with already working inspectors and one month with various departments including Rescue 1122, CTP and Civil Defence. A senior LTC official, on anonymity, claimed that the aforesaid inspectors joined their training on June 4 and 10 to 15 men joined the batch a little later. He said that the training session of these inspectors would end as soon as the training of the ones who joined late completed.
The Punjab government established LTC about three years ago to develop a better infrastructure of urban transport in the city but the project has not able to produce desired results. Currently, three traffic managing agencies are working in the provincial capital. City Traffic Police (CTP), old traffic police and LTC. Old traffic police officials work with the railway police and manage traffic around railway stations while CTP and LTC officials work in the inner city.
CTP officials could only issue tickets or manage private vehicles while officials of LTC deal with PSV vehicles, taxis and rickshaws but yet traffic management is considered a major problem of the city.
