I would like to bring to your attention the current tactics being employed by our esteemed traffic police. They crouch and hide near various strategically painted pedestrian crossings and double lines ( often in meaningless areas) and leap out at motorists brandishing books at them and "booking" them for relatively minor offenses.
Meanwhile, private bus drivers and tri-shaw drivers continually flout the law and make driving in this thrice blessed land an unbelievable nightmare. Colombo driving consists of going from one traffic jam to another, every junction is a hopeless tangle of vehicles with no one giving way to anyone and it being a case of survival of the fittest. Driving the Kandy Colombo road ( incidentally dubbed a highway in traffic police parlance) last Poya day, I counted 63 police officers on traffic duty. One may recall that the entire distance is just 72 miles and still the private buses and Tri-shaws continued unchecked. If this excess of Police personnel could be deployed at the bus stands and vital junctions, they would provide a much better service to the tax paying motorists of this country than by simply trying to swell the bankrupt state coffers by "spot fining" anyone they can lay their eyes on.
If the top brass of the police force had an ounce of professional pride in them they should commit collective Hari-Kari and the members of the Police Commission should join them. Conduct a referendum among the people and you will find that the majority have absolutely no faith in the Police.
The Police Commission should recommend that the entire police force be disbanded and without sending our army on peace keeping mission in other countries we should deploy the army to do this job. Even the LTTE police will be better that this bunch of corrupt, rude , incompetent people who are contributing to the general break down in law and order without preserving it. One reads of Policemen being shot at checkpoints by armed gangsters.
If you stop and this this may be due to the fact that very few legitimate detections are made at these checkpoints. The personnel manning them make a massive sum of money by taking bribes and "detections" are only made when the bribe is not sufficient or when a rival gang pays more to have their opponents busted.
Please publish this letter, if you see fit, this is another way of looking at reasons for the breakdown of law and order in this country. The guardians of the law are hopelessly incompetent and have no respect among the citizens !
R.A.Ratwatte,
Ethul Kotte
