Sambalpur: The traffic wing of Sambalpur district police has inducted 100 students as traffic volunteers after providing them with necessary training and orientation. They have been selected from various colleges and schools in cooperation with their principals through a screening process.
The induction programme took place Saturday at Police Community Centre in Reserve Police Line here under the chairmanship of Sambalpur SP Sanjiv Arora. ASP Amarendra Rana coordinated the function and anchored the event.
Chief Guest, Revenue Divisional Commissioner (RDC) DV Swamy gave away training certificates, identity cards, T-shirts, shoes and caps to the young traffic volunteers.
Presenting some facts and figures on the role of traffic police in the district, Arora said that the student traffic volunteers could be an asset to the department as shortage of manpower is a major problem in implementation of traffic rules in the city area.
He said Orissa is a pioneer in student traffic volunteers system in the country and its modalities have been worked out in Sambalpur district only after the system was successfully implemented in the twin city area. He said once the experiment proved successful, more students would be inducted into the scheme.
Explaining the double benefits of the scheme, SP Arora said that awareness of traffic rules will be enhanced among the people when the volunteers’ parents, relatives and friends find their wards performing traffic police duty. Besides, student volunteers will get a clear knowledge of the traffic police role.
Inspector General of Police Sushant Nath said the new initiative to put students in traffic police duty seems imminent, as there are just 115 police personnel available for one lakh population as per the all India average.
Sambalpur University Registrar Surya Thankappan, an IPS officer, said that similar experiments to bring social awareness could be easily carried out by her university as more than one lakh students and staff members from 233 affiliated colleges in 11 districts are at its direct command. PNN
