Karachi Traffic Police will now patrol roads on bicycles

In a first, Karachi Police will now be patrolling the streets of Saddar on bicycles, while a portable toilet has also been introduced to facilitate traffic cops.

Shedding light on the initiative, Deputy Inspector-General (DIG) Traffic Iqbal Dara said that the "bicycle squad" has been introduced in Saddar to solve the problem of frequent traffic jams that occur almost every day due to narrow lanes.

On Friday, Dara inspected and inaugurated both the facilities at the Metropole Traffic Checkpoint in Saddar.

The DIG Traffic said that in an area like Saddar — which is one of the busiest areas of Karachi —  it is hard for traffic police officers to reach a spot if traffic jams occur there because the streets are very narrow.

"In the first phase of the initiative, five bicycles have been introduced in the area, while cars and heavy motorbikes will also continue to function in the area," Dara said.

Portable toilets

Dara said that he issued the directives to start a portable toilet service for traffic police personnel because they face a lot of difficulties finding toilets due to the nature of their job.

The DIG Traffic said that after standing on the roads for several hours, traffic police personnel have to face severe troubles finding toilets during their duty hours.

"To resolve the issue, we have decided to introduce a mobile toilet on an experimental basis," Dara said.

He said that the portable toilet would move from one location to another across the city to facilitate traffic police personnel.

"The wheeled toilet will stop at particular traffic checkpoints for the traffic police on duty to use, stay there for some time, and then move to another location," Dara explained.

He added that traffic police would also be able to call for a mobile toilet whenever the need arises.