CHENNAI: As the COVID-ridden days progress, people’s familiarity with the disease and situation has infused a sense of cockiness into their attitudes, encouraging them to flout norms. As the public thronged banks and ration shops on Thursday, the police had an arduous task ahead of them, of ensuring social distance between them, and adopted different methods to keep motorists off the streets.
On the second day of the newly begun financial year, banks were functioning and hundreds of people thronged their respective branches for transacting business. Similarly, people also queued up in front of ration shops to collect the relief supply and cash announced by the government. Police personnel in Mylapore and Alwarpet sent back people without masks waiting in lines at grocery stores and banks and warned the store staff to not let anyone in without a mask.
Triplicane police have adopted an ‘artistic’ method, to deter motorists from unnecessarily roaming on the roads by giving the vehicles a yellow tilak as a sign of warning. Triplicane has some of the important hospitals including Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super Specialty Hospital, Omandurar Government Hospital, Government Kasturba Gandhi Hospital and a popular clinic for jaundice. Both, doctors and patients commute to these places on a daily basis. However, some misuse the vehicle movement to roam around the locality, said police.
“In the morning, the road gets busier and all the motorists claim that they were heading to vegetable shops. But we discourage them from riding with pillion and ask those visiting hospitals not to come in groups. However, if they are spotted again, we stick a yellow dot on the vehicles as a warning to deter them. We tell them if they are found on the road again, the vehicle would be seized, said police inspector S Seetharaman. Meanwhile, a few police stations have deployed drones for surveillance in their jurisdiction.