The 29th National Road Safety Week that was launched by the Siliguri Metropolitan Police (SMP) on 23 April drew to a close with a closing ceremony held at Burdwan Road here on Monday.
While the event on Monday was delayed due to bad weather conditions, they did not seem to deter the enthusiastic students from various schools in Siliguri, other participants, and the police force from joining hands to spread awareness on road safety.
With the growing population and the traffic congestion and instances of violation of traffic rules in the town, all six traffic guards under the Siliguri Police Commissionerate (Bhaktinagar, Panitanki, Jalpai More, NJP, Junction and Bagdogra) had arranged for several awareness programmes during the week.
The events were held in schools and other locations all around Siliguri, while several drivers of passenger buses, long route lorries, small passenger vehicles and ambulances were involved in the programmes.
“The slogan for the weeklong campaign was ‘Sadak Suraksha, Jeewan Raksha.’ There are rules for road safety and we all need to follow that. We are safe (on the roads) if we follow the rules,” SMP commissioner Sunil Chaudhary told the closing ceremony.
“Events like skits on traffic awareness, distribution of flowers and sweets to every traffic rule violator on the road, followed by a sit-and-draw competition were held during the awareness programmes, through which the police tried to spread across the message that road safety is very important, and that people need to follow the set rules,” a police officer said.
The mood of the closing ceremony was lighted up by students of a private school, who presented a short skit on causes of road accidents with the theme “Safe Drive Save Life”.
Three winners were chosen in the sit-and-draw competition. Biswadeep Das, Sudha Singh, and Atul Kumar took away the first, second and third prizes, respectively, for the sketches they drew on the theme ‘Sadak Suraksha, Jeewan Raksha’ earlier this week. The prizes were given away by the Commissioner of Police.