Kathmandu, August 19:

The Traffic Police in the valley was all prepared, but failure on the part of students, representatives of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City Police and civilians to keep their promise led to a dismal beginning of a month-long special traffic campaign launched in the Kathmandu valley.

Neither student volunteers nor the City Police turned up at the eight major road intersections in the Kathmandu valley to join hands with the traffic police to help create awareness about traffic rules and avoid traffic jams.

The MPTD today launched the programmes at Ratnapark, Jamal, New Baneshwor, Koteshwor, Narayan Gopal Chowk, Kalamiti, Kalanki and Chabahil Chowk from. “The first day of the month-long campaign could not make any difference as anticipated because the volunteers did not turn up as they had promised,” Bhishma Prasai, joint-commissioner SSP at the MPTD, said. “The civil volunteers did not arrive at the intersections as per the agreement. City Police remained absent due to the strike in the KMC and students didn’t turn up because there is strike going on in education institutions,” Prasai told this daily.

“On top of that, lack of financial resources affected our drive. We could not afford mikes, loudspeakers and banners. But the traffic policemen deployed in various intersections have been strictly directed to work seriously to control traffic jams.” According to him, there are 82 road intersections in Kathmandu and the City Police and the Traffic Police had agreed to deploy 150 and 700 personnel respectively to control the traffic congestion.

A commuter Jaganath Khadka, who was rushing for office from Madhyapur Thimi, said that the traffic jam was as usual and could not see any change at Koteshwor whereas Kabita Sharma, head assistant at Employees’ Provident Fund Office, said she reached office 10 minutes earlier today than usual.