Kerala Motor Vehicle Department to restart safety classes

Kochi: Over a week after road safety initiatives of the Motor Vehicle Department in the district came to an abrupt stop due to paucity of funds, the Transport Commissioner on Monday directed officials concerned to restart road safety awareness classes. He has assured to release of funds in two days. DC had highlighted the issue in March 11 report, which also called for formation of a separate council to manage funds with the Kerala Road Safety Authority. Among the programmes stopped were the mandatory road safety awareness class given to fresh candidates applying for licence and those caught for traffic rule violations in places such as North Paravur, Mattancherry and Kakkanad, among others.

"Transport Commissioner S. Aananthakrishnan has directed all Motor Vehicle Inspectors (MVIs) and AMVIs to the classes, citing that minimum funds for the same will be allotted in two days," said a senior MVD official. The road safety awareness classes in North Paravur were started back in 2009. Till two weeks back, these classes used to run regularly on every Tuesday and Saturday. "Despite 300 people directly benefit from a week's class, we were forced to stop them as we did not receive funds for the past 10 months. Due non-payment, the building owner locked the 'class room'. Now we're restarting the classes in the wake of the direction," said an official at North Paravur.

However, officials point out that only a minimum amount will be provided for the classes. Earlier, a sum of Rs 3,000 used to be allotted for a single class. Now only Rs 1,000 will be provided. This means the lunch and other snacks provided to candidates will be discontinued. Meanwhile, the fate of other road safety programmes still hangs in balance. "Other programmes have been temporarily stopped due to lack of funds. The norms under which fund is disbursed from the Kerala Road Safety Authority has been made stricter," Regional Transport Officer P.H. Sadiq Ali said. An official of the KRSA said the authority is facing a fund shortage and that Rs  360 crore is due from the exchequer. "The KRSA has approached the Finance Department many times to allot the funds," he said.