|
PRESS
RELEASE & NEWS ARTICLES ON URC FORUMS
Helmet
use can prevent 50 pc of accidents
Use
of helmets can prevent 45 to 50 percent of road accidents, according to Dr
Rashid Juma, eminent neurosurgeon and executive director, Jinnah
Post-Graduate Medical Centre (JPMC).
Delivering
a lecture on Friday under the auspices of Urban Resource Centre (URC), a
non-governmental organisation, he said as many as 850 people died in road
accidents in Karachi in 2007 and about 500 of them were motorcyclists.
He
said nowhere in the world were motorcyclists allowed to drive without
helmets and the law in Pakistan too bound motorcyclists to wear helmets but
unfortunately it was not implemented.
He
said many accidents in Karachi occurred because of faulty construction of
bridges and flyovers. He said the cause analyses of these accidents
indicated that 84.30 per cent of them occurred due to the faults of road
users, 13.34 per cent due to environmental factors, and 2.30 due to
vehicular faults. He said the proportion of accidents had also increased in
the city because angular faults flyovers.
“Instead
of giving out contracts for the construction of bridges and flyovers, they
should be constructed by qualified civil engineers,” he remarked.
He
said besides several “black spots” in the city where accidents took
place, there were as many as 921 accidents on National Highway between
September 2006 and July 2007. These claimed 52 lives, he added.
Many
of the accidents took place due to encroachments, deteriorated condition of
road shoulders, illegal parking, unloading activity, and absence of pavement
parking and guide signs.
He
said pedestrians were the second most vulnerable group and statistics showed
that 22 per cent injuries and 38 deaths were within this group. The most
vulnerable were pedestrians under 16 (12.80 percent) or over 51 (6.70 per
cent), he added.
He
said critical issues were failure to wear helmets, overspeeding, lack of
pedestrian facilities, failure to halt buses at designated bus stops, lack
of safety measures in areas where construction was going on, and poor
visibility.
He
said many accidents occurred on Korangi Road due to water dripping from the
water tankers and trucks carrying fishmeal. He said police should ensure
that only those tankers and trucks were allowed to ply the roads that had
secured valves.
Buses
and heavy vehicles, he said, should be driven only by well-trained drivers
and buses should halt at designated bus stops only.
Dr
Juma’s recommendations included making helmet use mandatory, improved
motorbike riding skills, rigorous enforcement of rules and regulations, and
implementation of a mass transit system in the city.
He
said motorway police should be deployed on all highways.
He
said most of the accidents on Korangi Road occurred due to the absence of
street lights, sand loading activity, absence of medians, and poor condition
of road shoulders.
He
said surveys showed that many accidents took place on account of buses
plying on two routes and whenever they were issued warnings, the number of
accidents fell.
He
said at Lyari Railway Station and the TCF School, a lack of fencing was the
main cause of accidents.
He
said road safety audits were being made in collaboration with City District
Government, Karachi (CDGK) but unfortunately the latter did not have the
required staff strength.
(The
NEWS, 09/02/2008)
Flaws
in mega projects’ planning highlighted
Karachi: Most of the mega projects are planned without the consent of
citizens and without conducting proper environmental and socio-economic
studies.
Social scientist and expert Naseer Memon highlighted this at the forum of
Urban Resource Centre (URC) here on Wednesday. “That is why the projects
that start as a hype end up as failure leaving the country under the huge
burden of loans,” he remarked while speaking about the socio-economic and
environmental impacts of the mega projects.
As an example of such highly funded projects in the drainage sector, he gave
a detailed presentation on the Left Bank Outfall Drain Project (LBOD) that
commenced in 1984 with the aim to provide safe disposal of effluent from the
districts of Sindh into the sea.
That project was mainly funded by the World Bank (WB) and the Asian
Development Bank. “Although the project was initiated at an estimated cost
of Rs8.5 billion, it ended up with over 31 billion expenditure,” he
pointed out while disclosing that the outfall was designed and executed
without proper consultation with stakeholders.
The most viable option was rejected in that project on political account and
a 42km long Tidal Link Canal was built as the spinal drain of the project.
Besides, an embankment with 4.5ft height and 1800ft wide Cholri Weir were
built to maintain water level in lakes.
The weir collapsed in 1998 while a disastrous cyclone in 1999 caused 54
breaches in the embankment of the tidal link, leaving it completely
irreparable. As a result of the destroyed link canal, seawater found a
regular inlet into lake system, as a result local drains started
back-flowing towards land.
When the Inspection Panel of the World Bank was approached in September
2004, they investigated the issue and submitted a report in July 2006,
pointing out a number of natural factors that were previously neglected.
The bank wanted to compensate the affected people through two new projects -
Coastal Area Development Program (CADP) and Water Sector Improvement Project
(WISP). Both CADP and WSIP are financed under WB loans of US$ 90 million and
US$ 140 million, respectively, which are not compensation but additional
loans.
Concluding his presentation, Naseer Memon laid stress on the need of such
projects that not only encounter the problems of citizens but must also not
cause additional liabilities (in the form of loans) that would be paid off
by none other than the citizens of this country.
(The
News, 17/01/2008)
Traffic
police launch drive against over-speeding
Traffic
police have been instructed to impose section 279 on the drivers for
over-speeding with effect from April 15. The Deputy Inspector General of
Police (Traffic), Karachi, Wajid Ali Khan Durrani issued this instruction
while taking notice of 29 fatal accidents that took place in one month
alone.
“This would be a special drive to control speed violations,” he said.
However, he maintained that initially two vehicles with a device to check
speed violations would be deployed at Mai Kolachi and Sunset Boulevard and
later at Korangi Road where accidents occur more frequently due to over
speeding.
Durrani was talking to an open forum on Wednesday at the office of Urban
Resource Centre, an NGO that holds discussions on civic issues. He briefed
the forum regarding the solutions he had proposed to higher authorities and
the progress made so far in this regard. He said that he was working to
induct 2,000 officers, passed from public service commission. He also
proposed increasing salaries of traffic personnel and giving them some
incentives that might help minimize corruption and yield good results.
He emphasized on the provision of Mass Transit System, saying, flyovers and
underpasses would not solve the problem since a big city like Karachi where
both population and vehicle growth was always on the rise should have proper
Mass Transit System be it by means of buses or trains. He also stressed the
need for deploying latest equipment and traffic control devices without
which it would be difficult for his men to work efficiently.
Responding to a question regarding the recruitment of women traffic wardens,
he said: “In the present situation where people often quarrel with
policemen and even beat them, it won’t be a good idea to bring women”.
Giving an example, he said there were cases when traffic sergeants were shot
or hit with speeding vehicles while performing their duties. “This
attitude of public doesn’t favour women recruitment. We can do it later
once the new force is inducted and situation changes, for which we have been
working,” he added.
Earlier, Durrani gave a detailed presentation on traffic and transport
problems, hindrances on the part of other stakeholders and the current
capability of the department.
“In 2002, some 84 vehicles per day were added to traffic and that ratio
has now reached 544 vehicles a day,” he informed, adding: “1.8mn
vehicles are plying in the city while there are only 1,200 to 1,300
policemen to control and regulate traffic.”
He further said that only 20,000 buses were plying in Karachi which happens
to be the seventh biggest city of the world in terms of population.
(The
News-14, 17/04/2008)
|
