Minister for Communication, Muhammad Shamim Siddiqui said on Friday that 550 kilometres long Makran coastal highway will be handed over to Motorway Police during the current month. Speaking in a PTV programme he said the decision had been made to improve security conditions on a very important highway.
The highway was passing through less populated areas and the commuters were facing insecure while travelling through it the Minister said adding that by deploying the Motorway police this issue would be addressed. He said the highway would become a busy traffic route following this change.
While appreciating the performance of Motorway Police he said that there were very less complaints about the misconduct of this force. Daily around 2000 telephone calls were received about the performance of this force most of which were appreciative, he said.
To a question the Minister said that Motorway Police challans the commuters only when there was a violation, adding he said 12 percent of challan money goes to contractor who provides the challan collection service. The remaining amount goes to National Highway Authority (NHA) who spent 50 percent of it on roads maintenance works and 50 percent of this amount was handed over to Motorway Police.
The Motorway Police spends 50 percent of the received amount on road signs and public awareness messages. The remaining portion of this amount was distributed among the police officers in the shape of annual awards on the basis of their performance.
He said that criteria for the selection of award receiving officers were their performance in the light of public feedback and not the number of challans.
To another question he said, the National Transport Research Center has prepared around 200 research papers which provide guideline for traffic behaviour, designing and quality of the service and the future prospects to the relevant departments.
He said with the co-ordination of Japanese government an organised Construction Machinery Training Institute had been set up and the process was underway to set up one centre each in all the provinces.
With regard to employment opportunity, this a very promising area he said adding the trained youth of this institution get attractive jobs before the announcement of their final results.
Shamim Siddiqui appreciated the performance of the NHA saying the organisation was busy hard in implementing the government's plan of comprehensive inter-provinces and inter-regions roads network.