As temperatures rise in Kerala, traffic policemen on the street have had to bear the brunt of the sizzling summer. But helping them face the heat is an organization in Ernakulam with a campaign called ‘COmPassion on roads’, which aims to supply policemen working under the blazing sun with much-needed bottles of water.
The initiative has been started by MiddlePath, an organization formed out of volunteers of the popular ‘Say No to Hartal’ campaign. It was inaugurated by actor Asif Ali and Ernakulam MLA Hibe Eden by handing over bottles of water to the traffic police spread across the four traffic circles in Ernakulam.
Raju P Nair, president of MiddlePath, said that most traffic policemen across the city do not have access to clean drinking water as they cannot leave their traffic booths, since that might cause disruptions and traffic jams. “Though their duty time is ideally 3 hours, due to certain issues, most of them have to stay for around 6 hours without access to good water which can be detrimental to their health in the current weather,” he added.
One month into the initiative, MiddlePath has succeeded in providing over 10,000 litres of water to policemen across the city with the help of over 1700 volunteers. Besides providing water to policemen at their assigned posts, MiddlePath have also deposited water bottles at traffic circle offices so that policemen can pick them up on the way to their assigned locations.
An online donation campaign has also been started for this initiative. “Collection drives were conducted at Lulu Mall and various other institutions to make this a crowd-sourced initiative,” Raju said.
Raju hopes that initiatives like this are important for maintaining a positive relationship between the public and the police. “Traffic police are often thought of only as people who stand on the roads to take bribes from the people. This is not true. They sacrifice a lot to make our travel easier and hence it’s our responsibility to make sure that we build a better relationship with them,” he said.
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