THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Will a police officer dare to stop an ambulance that is moving at a high speed with its siren wailing and emergency lights on? This privilege being enjoyed by ambulance services, clubbed with the mushrooming number of ambulance services in the state, is indeed becoming a cause of concern for the law enforcers. The entry of various extremist outfits as well as certain organisations, whose social services remain a mystery, into ambulance operations adds to the concern of the police. The issue came up for discussion at a recent meeting of top police officers in the state and DGP Jacob Punnoose has directed the Intelligence wing to chalk out certain measures to deal with the issue.
According to the data available with the Motor Vehicles Department (MVD), there are 3,292 ambulance services in the state at present. These include 3,098 light motor vehicles, 97 medium motor vehicles and 97 heavy motor vehicles.
The ambulance services are offered tax concession. Sources in the Police Department said that ambulance services were being widely misused by various outfits to give cover to their mysterious activities. Especially several extremist outfits are now operating ambulance services with ulterior motives. While the RSS operates 23 ambulance services across the state, the Popular Front of India, which is under a cloud of suspicion for its alleged extremist activities, is also learnt to be operating ambulance services. However, the PFI leaders said that they were not operating ambulance services at present.
"At present we don’t have any mechanism to regulate ambulance services. Besides those allowed by the MVD, there are also a number of ambulance services operating in the state without the permission of the MVD. Hence, a mechanism to monitor ambulance services in very essential," the DGP said.
During the last Attukal Pongala, an ambulance being run by an extremist outfit was found frequently speeding towards the restricted areas near the temple a number of times. A senior police officer became suspicious and intercepted the vehicle. He was surprised to see that the ambulance was transporting women for the pongal celebrations, recalls City Police Commissioner MR Ajithkumar.