07 April,2011 06:28 AM IST | | Poornima Swaminathan
Police department will phase out its fleet of Qualis patrol vehicles, and replace them with Boleros and Scorpios
The ubiquitous Qualis police patrolling jeeps that Mumbaikars are so accustomed to seeing at police stations and on the streets of the city will no longer be around.
Instead, a new fleet of sturdier Scorpios and Bolero jeeps will make their presence felt on patrols. More than 1,500 new jeeps will now act as a shot in the arm for local patrolling.
In fact, on April 5, hundreds of old police vehicles were put up for auction at the Motor Vehicle Transport (MT) headquarters at Byculla.
This could mean 1,141 vehicles will be headed for the scrap yard or will be refurbished by private owners to return on the streets of Mumbai after getting a new lease of life.
Meanwhile, the MT department has procured a new lot of 60 vehicles and police stations across the city will be given the new patrolling jeeps.
"Most of the Qualis and Gypsy patrol jeeps have outlived their lives," said Rajkumar Vhatkar, deputy commissioner of police, Mumbai police headquarters.
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"The new vehicles will add more punch to the patrolling rounds," he added.
Patrol watch
Currently, around 3, 900 patrolling jeeps are distributed across the 90-odd police stations and other wings such as the Anti-narcotic Cell and the Mumbai crime branch.
The decision to procure new vehicles became a pressing issue when several of them had to be constantly sent for repairs and servicing.
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Senior officials of the MT department said that until recently, at least 150 police vehicles were sent for repairs every day.
The new vehicles will also come as a huge relief to the staff deployed in police stations as many officers had to resort to requesting for private vehicles to perform their day-to-day duties.
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"Often, constables use public transport to reach their respective beats and even to investigate cases," said a senior police official. "This also hampers the functioning of the police stations," he added.
Incidentally, post the 26/11-terror attack, the Maharashtra government sanctioned a Rs 200-crore budget for modernising the state police.
However, no budgetary allocations from that were disbursed for buying the patrolling jeeps, which are used daily and are the eyes and ears of the police.
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A fleet of 219 vehicles (Qualis) were added to the police department in 2002, but inu00a0the last couple of years, their repairs have mounted huge bills, said senior officials.
The government had been paying huge amounts for procuring spares, which are often subjected to bureaucratic bottlenecks.
In 2004, 420 Boleros were added to the police patrol. "A huge amount of resources are spent on keeping the 997 jeeps roadworthy. The new lot of vehicles will come as a huge relief," said the official.
1,500
New fleet of jeeps added to the police department
3,900
Number of patrolling vehicles currently distributed among various police stations in the city
Staff Shortage
The problem was further compounded, as there is an acute shortage of maintenance staff at the MT workshops at Nagpada, Tardeo, Ghatkopar and Marol.u00a0
The vacancies of ACPs (3), Inspectors (2), Sub-inspectors (18) and drivers (20) are yet to be filled up and have been lying vacant for the last couple of years.
A cursory look at the MT headquarters at Nagpada reveals that scores of vehicles are parked across the compound, most of them lying unattended for weeks.
