Coimbatore: Industrialists have come together under one umbrella to make the city accident-free by helping officials overhaul the traffic management apparatus.
UYIR, an NGO formed by leading industrialists to make the city accident-free, will donate CCTV cameras, barricades and traffic management equipment worth Rs 5 crore to the city police. The NGO will spend Rs 20 crore in four years to better the traffic management apparatus in the city.
The NGO has sought a proposal on how the city traffic police wanted to utilize Rs 5 crore this year and in response they had sought 400 CCTV cameras, automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and some rubber poles, which will be fixed on roads to provide free left. UYIR has subsequently informed the city traffic police its readiness to spend Rs 3 crore on advanced CCTV and ANPR cameras and another Rs 2 crore on barricades and other traffic management apparatus.
UYIR has hundreds of industrialists, educationists and doctors as its members. According to sources, the NGO will spend Rs 5 crore each per year for four years to develop roads and improved traffic management system in the city.
“We have sought more than 400 CCTV cameras and some ANPR cameras in the first phase. We have identified 13 major junctions to fix ANPR cameras, which would help us detect number plates of vehicles round the clock. Three major roads – Avinashi Road, Trichy Road and Mettupalayam Road -will be covered with CCTV cameras and within four years all major junctions in the city will be covered,” said a senior police officer, who didn’t want to be named.
He said the NGO has agreed to provide a lot of barricades and other traffic management apparatus. “This will help us reduce the fatal accidents in the city. We have already sent a proposal to district collector T N Hariharan to revise the speed limits in the city and this will be implemented very soon.”
The NGO also unveiled its plans to ink a memorandum of understanding with the city police, city municipal corporation, state and national highways and a few more stakeholders within a month period to implement the project. “We are taking steps to install the CCTV cameras within a month. This will be done with the city police’s help. We will also approach chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami to launch our activities,” a source said.
