Radio to educate citizens on traffic situation, laws

LAHORE
Malik Ashfaq, incharge Lahore Traffic Police channel RASTA 88.6 FM Saturday said the channel was launched to educate the people about traffic laws and inform them about latest traffic situations and problems.
Talking to The News, Ashfaq said the channel is being operated successfully by the staff of the City Traffic Police Lahore. He said the staff has very good communication skills, knows the technicalities and do research-based programmes.
The channel was formally inaugurated on July 9, 2009 in the wake of rising rush on roads that is result of urbanization and worst traffic jam on roads of Lahore. The City Traffic Police felt a need of keeping commuters aware about diversions and maintaining an uninterrupted flow of traffic on roads, the RASTA was launched on the pattern of other community channels.
The radio station was funded and constructed by United Team Network Technologies (UTNT)- a Pakistan-based system design and integration firm. It is manned by members of the Lahore Traffic Police.
Though the official website of City Traffic Police claimed that it provided RASTA provided 9 facilities. But in practice only three facilities; radio-channel 88.6 FM, www.rasta.pk and Traffic Helpline 1915 are functional.
Hasnain, shift-incharge of RASTA told The News that their radio service basically provided three services; Traffic Helpline- 1915, Radio Service and Website (www.rasta.pk). He said Traffic Helpline 1915 provides 24/7 services to the passengers. During the last year (2014) they received total 58,001 calls of different categories at Traffic Helpline 1915 and out of these calls, 3,166 fell under the category of problem calls, 4,863 were for output information, 24,435 were about inquiry of traffic situations, 18,807 asked information about traffic licences. He said the office received 476 calls about accident, 906 challans, 402 crimes, 436 wrong-parking, 468 complaints against staff, 464 against traffic signals violations, 186 suggestions and 173 paying gratitude during last year.
Talking about the website of www.rasta.pk of RASTA 88.6 FM, he said it showed live traffic conditions in map and tabular form. He said the radio-service of RASTA 88.6 FM was commercial free. He said the service provided by their radio should be termed as ‘infotainment’ as they provided information along with entertainment to their listeners.
He said besides providing updates about traffic situations, they ran awareness programmes about traffic laws. Their programmes were scheduled and their transmissions were focused on one of the laws of traffic each day, he maintained, saying that the citizens are also informed about domestic, international flights, train-timings and weather updates.
Their Radio Jockey (RJ) provided all these information in a highly professional manner to their listeners in such a way that they do not get bored, he said. They ran songs, music, commentary and other entertainment in their programs to catch the attention of the people, he said.
On a question, he said they are inter-connected with their field-staff through latest wireless communication system and receive traffic situations and updates within no time. Their team immediately updates this information on the RASTA’s website and FM radio-service, he said.
Website of the City Traffic Police Lahore claimed that the RASTA facilities include: integrated control room, 24/7 traffic helpline, website showing live traffic conditions in map and in tabular form, commercial free FM 88.6 traffic radio, traffic cameras connected with control room, variable messaging systems (VMS), traffic messaging, automated phone service for traffic update and educational resources regarding Pakistan driving laws.
The scribe in the control room of RASTA 88.6 FM found only three facilities operational namely the 24/7 traffic helpline, Website showing live traffic conditions in the map and in tabular form and commercial free FM 88.6 traffic radio providing guidance to citizens about traffic flow on City roads.
Alerts at the website www.rasta.pk were not updated regularly as claimed. At around 4:30 p.m on 17-01-2015, traffic load was observed on Edgerton Road, Empress Road, Abbot Road and Davis Road due to a protest by Pakistan Awami Tehreek in front of Lahore Press Club. But On a check of the website, there was no such update.
Similarly, alerts at the website have not been updated for more than a year. For example, on a check at 11:30 am on 16-01-15, it was learnt that alert No 11 stated that Ravi Road: Construction of MBS is in process (updated on) 12/18/2012 2:48:00 PM. Similar is the case with many other alerts.
Traffic Helpline 1915 has only 10 lines for a population of more than 10 million people. Call at this helpline was not free. Moreover, it was not advertised properly by Traffic Police as many people did not know as inquired by this correspondent.
There is no proper system for checking the rating of RASTA 88.6 FM radio-service. The team at the control room told that they could not know how many listeners were listening to the radio at a particular time.
Control room of RASTA 88.6 FM was inter-connected with field-staff through wireless system as contrary to the claim at the CTPL official website.
DSP Sajjad Mehdi, head of the RASTA 88.6 FM facility told The News that the other projects of the RASTA were in the pipeline and would be introduced soon.
He added the 10 lines of Helpline were sufficient and it was very unusual that all the lines get engaged at the same time. About outdated alerts at the RASTA website, he said that he would look into the matter get it updated. —The writer is an intern at The News