PANAJI
Two years after the State scrapped the ‘Traffic Sentinel Scheme’, it could make a comeback with the Pramod Sawant-led government likely to review the scheme in the wake of a significant rise in traffic violations and accidents.
A high-level meeting chaired by the CM to take a stock of the road safety measures, on Wednesday, decided that the “Sentinel Scheme will be reviewed.”
The scheme, in which citizens earned financial rewards for reporting road violations to the police, was scrapped in January 2021 owing to a series of controversies regarding its misuse by some sentinels. The cabinet decision came over six months after the scheme was kept in abeyance from July 15, 2020, to December 2020.
The then cabinet claimed that traffic police and CCTV cameras would bring road discipline. The scheme was introduced by the Director General of Police Muktesh Chander in 2017, to reduce traffic violations with the active participation of the citizens and encourage community policing through a mobile app introduced by the Goa Police.
In the meeting on Wednesday, CM expressed his concern regarding several road accidents and resultant fatalities. He directed strict action to bring accidents under control while he reviewed the work of each stakeholder department such as Public Works, Transport, Health Services, Education, etc.
As per the data revealed during the presentation, 251 people were killed in road accidents in the last calendar year. It was observed that majority of these accidents occurred on village roads and major district roads (MDR).
Sawant issued directions to the concerned agencies to carry out the cause and analysis of the accident and implement short-term and long-term measures on priority. The Principal Chief Engineer of the PWD informed that 10 percent of the estimate of road work is assigned to road safety aspects in the work like placing signboards, and barricades. The CM further directed the officials to expedite work and carry out an audit of State Highways, village roads, and MDR.
With the Transport Department facing a shortage of field enforcement staff, the government has decided to expedite the process of recruitment to enhance manpower. “Electronic Enforcement /CCTV surveillance cameras feed will be used to issue challan shortly,” the CM said.
The Health officials conveyed to the government the need for trauma care / ICU in both the District Hospitals with Technical Staff as well as four Highway Ambulances to improve emergency response to save the lives of accident victims.
A proposal in this regard will soon be submitted for further action.
The CM also asked the enforcement agencies to strengthen the drive against drunk driving, which is one of the main reasons for accidents.
