Chandigarh: With an aim to reduce the road fatalities, the Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann on Saturday flagged off a fleet of hi-tech vehicles of the country's first of its kind ‘Sadak Surakhya Force’ (SSF) – (road safety force).
Addressing a gathering at a function to launch this force here, he said that SSF would be instrumental in saving the lives of common man and from now on the data of every month would be analysed to judge the working of SSF and the data would also be shared with the people.
What are these SSF vehicles?
Stating that the SSF would cover 5,500 km of state and national highways, Mann expressed concern that 65% of road fatalities took place on the national and state highways adding that most of these fatal accidents took place between 6 pm and 12 pm (midnight), when the presence of police on these roads was minimal.
The chief minister said that as many as 144 patrolling vehicles, fitted with specialized equipment to check drunken driving and over speeding, would be deployed on these routes, each covering a distance of 30 kilometres.
SSF vehicles equipped with medical kits
Stating that these vehicles would also have a complete medical kit for providing emergency treatment to any person in need, Mann said that the force would be duly connected with trauma centres to ensure that people got required medical help on time.
He said that daily around 14 lives were lost in road accidents in Punjab and that this causality could be checked by manning the roads well for which the SSF had been constituted in the Punjab police.
In the first phase 1,296 newly recruited cops along with 432 existing police personnel would be deployed in SSF who would be deployed 24X7 in eight hour shifts each.
