Suryakant Jena

Paradip: In the absence of traffic personnel, travelling on the roads of Paradip has turned out to be a nightmare for commuters, thanks to the local authorities.

Residents in the port town continue to face acute traffic problems due to shortage of staff and alleged mismanagement by the concerned authorities.

“Many a times we see blatant violation of traffic norms like overloading of goods, open transporation of coal leading to pollution in the city. Neither the police nor the administration is concerned about it,” said a local Debaprasad Mandal. While the traffic posts are remaining vacant for several hours in a day, locals  have alleged that the administration has failed miserably in dealing with the situation.

“There seems to be no traffic rules at all because one can easily see trucks standing on the roads round the clock due to which a major portion of roads are not available for free movement of vehicles leading to traffic jam and accidents,” another local resident Sagar Kumar Jena said.

Similarly, locals are also a disgruntled lot as vehicles travelling on the national highway are being allowed to ply without going through any checking.

Residents have alleged that despite formation of a special task force for vehicle inspection on NH two years ago, it is yet to be functional.

However, Additional Collector Kanchu Charna Dheer said that the traffic task force is active and vehicle inspection and traffic management is being undertaken smoothly.

On the other hand Jagatsinghpur RTO Inspector Prasant Kumar Mohapatra said, "The traffic management and other allied issues is a joint responsibility of police and RTO. We are also implementing collector’s orders at other places wherever required as per availability of our staffs."

scrollToTop