This ‘Antiquated’ Traffic Police Jeep KA19 G 0267 needs Replacement?

This ‘Antiquated’ Traffic Police Jeep KA19 G 0267 needs Replacement?

Mangaluru: Recently on 15 January 2017, the city police’s patrolling got a boost recently with the addition of 25 new vehicles. With this, now the law and order department will have 37 patrolling vehicles and each of the 15 police stations will have a minimum of two such vehicles. The new vehicles have been given by the State government to improve the response time of the police to reach the crime spots. The new vehicles come with tabs that help policemen in reaching the spots quickly. “I expect policemen to have better knowledge of the area he/she is discharging duty using this vehicle,” Home Minister Parameshwara had said after launching these vehicles.

But what about the Traffic department police who need to reach an accident spot or other traffic related violations in time, when they still have some antique dilapidated vehicles- and one among them is the vehicle with license plate No KA 19 G 0267, which is about to breakdown completely sooner or later. For the second time, this police jeep being pushed by strangers since it has starting problems- and such a kind of police jeep is still in operation is something scary. What in case the cops have to reach an accident spot in time in this jeep, and they face all kind of problems from starting trouble, oil leakage, torn seats, worn out tyres etc,.

Out of curiosity, I went closer to this dilapidated police vehicle and was surprised to see its pathetic condition- and thought to myself how could a Circle inspector along with the constables travel in such a junk vehicle. The oil was leaking (see picture), the interior of the jeep was in bad shape, few parts of the vehicle exterior were rusted, although the speedometer read around 1 lakh plus kms, but I learnt this police jeep might have put over 2 lakh plus kms, since it is 2002 model.

The concerned authorities should immediately have a meeting to decide the fate of a proposal aimed at replacing this dilapidated or any other dilapidated police vehicles- and its approval is necessary for the continued safety of the public and officers. As of now what it looks like is department’s years of neglect. At any given time, probably a few department’s “antiquated” vehicles including this jeep are waiting for repair. Their age poses an additional problem: oftentimes mechanics find hard to find the suitable ‘antique’ parts.

In conclusion, The Traffic Police department needs better and good running vehicles, and the cops deserve the best quality of life possible. Safety is paramount as they develop best practices and policies to tackle issues the city is facing. I only hope the department will replace this KA 19 G 0267 “junk” traffic police jeep before it needs one more push by the citizens to start it?