City Traffic Police fills coffers imposing fines on ordinary drivers while ignoring luxury cars
City Traffic Police Lahore (CTPL) is selective in issuing challans for traffic violations in the city, shying away from influential persons while imposing fines on ordinary people, Pakistan Today has learnt.
Traffic wardens requesting anonymity told Pakistan Today that they were being given targets on daily basis to impose fines on citizens, which they had to meet even if it meant issuing chits on dubious grounds.
Wardens said that every year they are given targets for challans. Then the next year, the target is increased and they have to work under this burden and issue excessive challans just to save their skin from high-ups.
The wardens said that despite generating revenues for the traffic department through traffic violations, they had not been provide even basic facilities at their places of duty. They had to spend money out of pocket even for drinking water. They were being provided shadows at their places of duty only after a lapse of six years. But even the shades had been sponsored by private companies.
At the same time, they claimed that certain traffic violations had been ordered by the higher ups to be ignored.
This year Traffic Police have spared violations such as one-wheeling, opened door of vehicles, broken side mirrors, overtaking, usage of police number plate, violation of route of public transport, green number plate, revolving light on private vehicles, vehicles carrying goods without proper cover (Tarpal), usage of tape recorder, non-payment of previous challans and court fines.
They said they were not the ones minting money by sparing violations because drivers were quick to report such corruption.
But traffic police is not even-handed in their bid to meet their quotas. Records of challans issued by traffic wardens show that while they are quick to issue challans against rickshaws, motorcycles and other ordinary vehicles, they avoid issuing fine chits to luxury and costly jeeps and cars as 1,254,934 fine chits were issued to rickshaws during the last seven months while less than one percent of that number was issued to luxury cars and jeeps during the same period.
A spokesman for City Traffic Police, however, said that traffic violations could not be spared at any cost and that around 3,100 wardens had been tasked with maintaining flow of traffic in the city. CTO Lahore was not available for comment.
