A Shoura Council member has accused traffic departments around the country of deploying too few officers on the Kingdom’s roads to help reduce accidents and loss of life.

Abdulrahman Al-Atawi, the council member, was responding to assurances from Lt. Col. Ali Al-Qahtani, assistant director of the Riyadh Traffic Directorate, that the department was conducting enough law-enforcement campaigns on the city’s roads throughout the year.

Al-Atawi had earlier lambasted these campaigns as useless and argued that they served only to obstruct traffic and create congestion on the country’s roads.

“If there are sufficient traffic personnel and machinery, there will be no need for these campaigns. These campaigns have only become necessary because of the inadequate number of traffic officers.”

The traffic department must plan these campaigns more carefully, at proper times and places, to prevent public inconvenience, Al-Atawi said.

He said Riyadh and other cities have too few traffic officers and patrols.

This has encouraged reckless drivers to commit violations that have resulted in extensive property damage, and many people becoming permanently disabled or losing their lives.

“This is a fact that we should recognize and deal with. We should do our utmost to solve it. The traffic directorate should supply more personnel and machinery in the light of the growing population, the increasing number of vehicles and expanding towns and cities,” he said. Al-Atawi said Maj. Gen. Abdulrahman Al-Muqbil, director-general of the traffic authority, knows that the country has too few officers in the field.

“He told the Shoura Council’s security affairs committee that he would deal with the situation by transferring 118 officers and 840 individuals from office to field work,” he said.

Al-Atawi also called on the Public Security director-general to support the traffic department by supplying it with more men and machinery.

He said the Riyadh traffic police issued 28,492 fines for drivers obscuring their number plates from Saher. They also issued 33,478 tickets for drivers jumping red lights, and 48,117 violations for speeding. He said more traffic personnel on the roads throughout the year would prevent these violations.