Students to be issued dummy challan books to spread awareness

Ajay Joshi
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, May 21

To strictly restrain residents from violating traffic rules in the city, the district traffic police wing has come up with a new initiative. Under the plan, dummy challan books will be issued to students of some of the private as well as government schools in the city to spread awareness among traffic violators.

Using the challan books, the students will not only issue challans to offenders but will also monitor the traffic transgressions in their areas. The dummy challan books will possibly be issued to students below 15 years of age only. After launching the WhatsApp helpline numbers, this is the second such initiative by the traffic police wing in which residents were involved to check traffic violations.

ACP (traffic) Vaibhav Sehgal said: “The proposal to issue the dummy challan books to the students was adopted recently and possibly it will be issued to them by the next month.”

He said the purpose of issuing the books was to target the offenders at their homes only and children would help the traffic wing in spreading the cause and updating residents about the initiative taken by it.

Besides, the traffic education cell had also been organising traffic rules and awareness seminars in several schools of the district. The seminars focused on educating bus drivers, conductors and lady attendants about the Safe School Vahan Scheme. Over 12 seminars have already been organised by the cell this month.

Sehgal said: “Through the seminars, school van drivers are told about strict provisions of the scheme and are advised to carry documents of their vehicles, wear uniform and name plates during working hours and route number, loading capacity and the name of the school should be clearly mentioned on the van.”

He said the seminars proved to be informative and beneficial for students and drivers and conductors of schools as they were informed about traffic rules and road safety. Whereas, drivers and conductors were also acquainted with child safety. Students were also told about five rules of safety — keeping licence and documents with themselves, use of helmets, starting early and proper maintenance of vehicles.

Notably, due to the negligence of school authorities and drivers, 60 school vans and 150 three-wheelers ferrying students have been challaned this year by the traffic police in the city.