Over 1,300 persons have got back their mobile phones in Prakasam district, thanks to an initiative taken by Superintendent of Police Malika Garg.
The IT core team and the personnel at the police station level put in efforts to recover cell phones worth ₹1.35 crore, says the SP who completed one year in office here, during a conversation with The Hindu.
“We have doubled efforts to trace the over 500 mobile phones that are yet to be retrieved,” she added.
Village adoption programme for personnel at the grassroots level had been revived with a view to curb incidents of crime, she said, adding that the special drive launched to promote Disha app had seen as many as 6.90 lakh downloads in the district.
On this day, Prakasam police bagged the Governance Now India’s Police Gold Award- 2022 for the ‘Jail Released Tracking System’ project through virtual mode.
As part of the project, the field staff get the list of released prisoners from their area jail, their complete details, modus operandi and other details of crimes through google link to the field officers of the districts from time to time to keep them under surveillance.
“In a similar manner, using technology tools we keep track of history-sheeters in an effort to curb incidents of crime,” she added.
Thanks to a series of initiatives taken up by the Prakasam police, the number of roads accidents is on the decline, she said.
“Our efforts got recognition at the national level,” she said, while referring to ‘Digital Technology Sabha Excellence Award-2022’ in the Big Data Analytics category given earlier for the Road Accident-Risk Assessment & Enforcement Strategies project.
An analytical report on road accidents in the district was prepared in association with the transport, R&B engineering and municipal officials to assess the causes of road accidents from various angles and evolve permanent measures to prevent such road accidents.
Accident points and black spots across the district are drawn on Google Maps, and classified them year-wise and engineering initiatives taken to prevent mishaps. As part of this project, a special drive named 'NO ACCIDENT DAY' being implemented every Saturday across the district, innovative programmes such as Stop-Wash-Go are regularly held especially on the Chennai-Kolkata express way in the wee hours to ensure that the drivers do not fall asleep at the wheel.
Interventions such as sign boards, speed breakers, lighting systems, painting works, traffic cones, cat eyes, solar blinkers, radium stickers had been taken at the identified black spots to prevent accidents.
Special speed lens guns were installed at various places in the district to prevent accidents by controlling the speed of vehicles on the roads and strengthening the highway mobile patrol system to get the injured to hospital in the Golden Hour to avoid casualties. Helmets were given to select family members of those who succumbed to injuries in road mishaps so that they acted as ambassdors for promoting safe driving habit. “We are strict in enforcing traffic rules and imposing hefty fines for various violations like overs-peeding, triple riding, minor driving, overloading, drunken driving,” she added.
