Traffic moved at a snail’s pace in the city on Wednesday morning and evening following two big programmes organised by NGO Association and Sunni Yuvajana Sanghom (SYS) respectively.
The NGO Association took out a Secretariat march on the pension issue in the morning in which hundreds of government employees took part. A couple of other organisations too staged protests in front of the Secretariat and this threw vehicular traffic haywire.
Vehicles were blocked in front of Public Library and redirected via AR Camp to the Bakery Junction. A heavy congestion was experienced along the MG Road for nearly two hours. “Heavy traffic was experienced in the city from 11 am to 1 pm. Due to the heavy crowd assembled in front of the Secretariat, we had to block movement of vehicles in front of the Public Library,” said P Mohanan, Assistant Commissioner, Traffic (South).
The traffic was finally normalised by 1.30 pm, only to be disrupted by the arrival of special private buses carrying SYS activists to their conference venue in the city. According to police, they expected nothing short of 3,000 buses carrying SYS activists.
The Traffic and Police Department had deployed around 500 personnel to oversee the traffic and security arrangements ahead of the conference. The police had instructed the organisers to park the vehicles outside the city, especially along the Chackai Bypass, after dropping the activists who arrived to attend the conference. This proved effective and helped to reduce the congestion on city roads.
The organisers had informed the police that they expected a 1.5 lakh strong crowd to attend the programme. This had forced the men in uniform to be prepared and make special arrangements to maintain smooth traffic in the city.