‘Voluntary’ clause along with cost & security slowing down implementation in Mumbai’s restaurants & bars.
Mumbai’s ‘Road Safety Week’ campaign by the city’s traffic police, is getting stuck in a jam because of the lack of clear guidelines of the ‘Alco Booth’ facility launched as part of the campaign.
The service may get delayed to reach Mumbaikars as there is ‘confusion’ on who will actually install these booths. While the Traffic Police say that the bars have to purchase these booths from private manufacturers, the Bar Association wants traffic department to supply the booths.
Alco Booth – a device which may help Mumbaikars to self check alcohol levels in their blood, may cost nearly INR 50,000 from the private firm. Outlets serving alcohol are to install the booths for guests to check if their blood-alcohol level is within the ‘permissible’ limit to drive back home or call for assistance.
While launching this booth, Milind Bharambe, joint commissioner of police (traffic), said that some bars and restaurants have agreed to purchase this device, but bars & restaurant owners have different version.
“Not all bars can afford the cost of these booths. We will install these booths if the traffic police department supplies them to us,” said Pravin Agrawal, secretary, Mumbai Hotels Association. “These booths are pretty expensive so installing them would not be possible for many bars in the city,” added Agrawal who appreciated the move of traffic police to bring down the number of drunken drivers from city’s roads and supported the innovative idea.
However, while launching the booth it was cleared by the traffic police department that the installations of booths may be done under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Some officials from the traffic police have informed that it won’t be mandatory for bars to install a booth and the bars should rather take a self initiative to install one.
“The traffic police department cannot source booths to any of the bars in the city,” said Bharambe. He added that some companies have stepped forward to ‘sponsor’ these booths to the bars and some bars have readily accepted to install the booths.
The fact being that there are thousands of bars in the city. It won’t be possible to fix a booth at every bar at least in initial stage. It is learnt that these booths would first be installed in a few bars in the city and be tested and after that it would be gradually installed in other bars too.
