Relaxing the rules

Though laws are being made and passed to be in effect there is a common feeling that enforcement of such laws are happening in a haphazard manner.

Prasad Abu Bakr

Received Wisdom: Laws are being formulated with regard to bettering many aspects of our lives but the question remains whether they are enforced constantly and happens as an on going process? Is it done as a rule to bring to book all wrong doers or just to spite individuals who refuse to toe the line?

Since recently motorist came under scrutiny for various offence and were charged heavily whenever they were found in the wrong. It reduced a lot of complications for disciplined drivers and pedestrians too, reduction in road accidents were reduced by more than half. But one can see the tempo has slowed down at present and there are hardly any traffic police on the streets carrying out those duties.

Recently in Nugegoda junction while a bus was parked yards away from the bus stand and was in the process of collecting passengers a police constable was seen blowing his whistle gesturing the driver to move as he was creating a traffic jam owing to several other busses getting in a queue behind the first one.

As the policeman was approaching, annoyed at the slow manner in which the driver was responding to his call the conductor gets off the bus and runs to the policeman saying that the bus belongs to... mentioning the name of a prominent politician, This deterred the cop from carrying out any further action that was on his mind and he turned and walked away to attend to his other traffic duties leaving the long queue of buses to form and the traffic jam to build-up. The driver too took his own time filling his bus with passengers.

Even in other areas of public life and its day-to-day events one find that authorities who are supposed to check on things are never found carrying out their duties.

Checking officers appointed to check on buses plying on roads without issuing commuters with tickets are never around to do their job and even if one sees them, which is very, very rarely; then you find the conductor goes to them before they can get in to the vehicle and after a hushed-up muttering of words, which takes place a little away from the gaze of the on looking passengers; the conductor returns to the bus which then takes off.

In other related incidents, when the checking officers are sighted at a distance the conductor rushes to the passengers issuing them with tickets and at one instance the tickets that were issued were all of the same price and probably would have looked very evident that they were all issued en masse. But the 'checkers' just glanced through everybody's tickets and ordered the bus to leave.

Now are not all these incidents of humour? It makes us passengers wonder whom these authorities are trying to fool and why such rules were imposed in the first place if they cannot be put in to operation properly.

Errant bus drivers are another menace. They drive all over the road and even knock down pedestrians haphazardly. Sometimes it is shocking to see the traffic police turning a blind eye to these incidents, though they are standing right in the middle of things at prime time traffic hours.

Health inspectors are also a breed that have mysteriously disappeared from our society. Where have they all gone while there are scores of un-clean eating houses operating, not only in Colombo but all over the country.

One only has to take a peep at a eating house in the heart of the Pettah bus stand, even the places that operate as fruit juice parlours.

They don't event have sufficient water to wash the glasses that the juice is served in, after being used by the customers. All one has to do is take a walk around the Pettah eating houses in the afternoons to see to oneself the unhygienic condition under which they operate.

There are hardly any health inspectors in sight on any given day of the week and the owners carry on regardless with dirty floors, unclean food cupboard and most of the time foods are left open on those show cases with flies settling on them.

With such conditions prevailing at present it is inevitable that some kind of epidemic will break out any minute. The moment that happens there will be a few raids that will be conducted and some fuss will prevail for a short while and after a while it will be business as usual.

This is also true about other state of affairs where checking is concerned. even the strenuous effort at curbing drunken driving and speed driving by private buses came after a spate of road accidents in which innocent pedestrians and other motorists died in vain.

There were authorities screaming from the top of their voices stating the need for a more disciplined driver on our roads. Rules were made and passed but what is happening today is that the same authorities are already sleeping over the book of rules that were brought in by them.

Rules are also found to be more of a threatening nature rather than actually carrying out the threat. To close telecasting of programmes by 10.00 pm was one such threat but authorities changed their minds after much criticism was levelled over the matter. What actually should happen is that a levy should be imposed on channels that operate late un-necessarily, specially on weekdays.

For example there is a channel that begins to telecast a full length movie every weekday starting at 11.00 pm and ending long past midnight. Now for whose benefit is this done?

If it is not vacation time and most adults that watch that type of movie are working types, it is only questionable why such hours are concentrated upon by these channels? Unless they are obliging a few jet-setting types that suffer from panic attacks of insomnia. In a country where schools start at 7.30 and the public sector at 8.30 and the private sector by 9.00 this is most stupendous.

Now there is an incline to impose a tax on importing of 'low quality' soap operas and dubbing them in Sinhalese plus on foreign language films, unless they are award winning classics, children's films or of some educational value.

According to many it is a good move to cleanse our channels of unwanted riff-raff but there seem to be a lot of haggling going on behind the scenes by interested parties.

It is also debated that there is a large audience for these soap operas and foreign films, especially the Hindi ones.

The soaps in question are so much in demand that Indian outfits have started to visit our shores and are already producing similar products.

At least three of them are already being shown, so the necessity to dub in Sinhala does not arise in that case.

However it is time that all those rules that have come in to operation and most of the ones that are being introduced by policy makers go in to action in perfect order without fear or favour.

Debate is a healthy option while administrators try to impose rules but it must be borne in mind that if rules are imposed for the betterment of society and to safeguard national interest then a broader margin should be drawn in favour of safeguarding it and also make sure that officials who are supposed to look in to putting them into effect carry out their duties properly.