State Motor Vehicle Act to be given more teeth: Ramzan

Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Apr 25: Minister for CA&PD and Transport, Ch. Mohammad Ramzan today said that State Motor Vehicles Act (MVA) would be given more teeth in coming days so that no violators roam free.
The Minister said this at the review meeting of Transport Advisory Committee here this afternoon. The Minister said that directions has been passed to sought out suggestions from all the stakeholders for making MVA more stringent for take action against traffic violators.
He said that day in and day out traffic accidents are consuming precious lives in the State and time has come “we all have to take some immediate measures to stop it”. He said that stringent law is the first step in this direction.
Mr Ramzan directed all the concerned authority to strictly implement the traffic rules on the ground and the measures taken by the Ministry during last two months should be enforced. He directed both the RTOs to issue driving licences to genuine and trained driver.
The Minister asked the RTOs and private transporters to ensure reserve seats for women and handicapped in passenger vehicles at any cost. He asked the private transporters to aware the drivers and cleaners to enforce the decision strictly. He further asked them to introduce GPS in their new fleets which would help in streamline the transport system in the state. He said that Government has already planned to introduce this system in SRTC fleet.
The Minister gave the direction for reconstituting the Transport Advisory Committee to provide representation to every stake holder of every region particularly civil society. He also directed that action taken report of every meeting should be distributed to the members before the next meeting.
To rationalise the fare charges of school buses across the State, the Minister gave on the spot direction to constitute two committees one each in Jammu and Srinagar under the chairmanship of Divisional Commissioner so that parents should be saved from exorbitant charges and hike on every year.
The meeting also took the decision that registration would be given to only those new private vehicles that have parking facility.
During the meeting, the private transporters raised various issues and most of the issues have been sorted out.
Secretary Transport, Marij-ud-Din Kakroo, Transport Commissioner, IG Traffic, Muneer Khan , VC JDA, MD SRTC and other members of Transport Advisory Committee were present in the meeting.