Missing in action

Missing in action
By: Chetan R
Date: 2008-11-25

Bangalore:

Long wait: Vehicles piled up in the 9 hours it took
to get the truck fixed
Cops were so busy with the Turkish prime minister's visit to the city that the task of regulating traffic on the Sarjapur Outer Ring Road was all but forgotten.

A truck carrying timber had broken down in the middle of the road at 4 am yesterday but remained unattended for nine hours since police personnel incharge of clearing traffic were deputed as part of Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan's security. As a result, cars were lined up as office-goers struggled to make it to work on time.

"The truck was left unattended for hours together and nobody was bothered to clear it," said Ramesh.V, a software engineer, who spent almost three hours in the jam.

By 7 am, two cops made an attempt to clear it with the help of a crane but the truck was overloaded. Soon, traffic piled up from Eco Space on the Outer Ring Road to the BDA complex in HSR Layout.

"There were only a few policemen to clear it," said R Prasad who was on his way to Sarjapur. "We heard that most of them were on duty during the Turkish PM's visit to the Infosys campus."

Apart from the police, even the truck owner did nothing to clear up the mess on a road that sees mostly techies travelling to over 40 companies and over 10,000 to 15 000 vehicles during peak hours.

1km per hour

"We took nearly an hour to travel a kilometre," said Prasad. "Police should be around at least during such crises to take steps to clear the traffic."

However, traffic police and ORRCA (Outer Ring Road Companies' Association) staff said the truck was cleared by 1pm and traffic flowed freely.

And police say there was no lapse in the first place. We made all attempts to clear the traffic," said Venkatesh, traffic inspector, "there was no lapse from our side."