In the past week, around 1 million police officers around the country have been placed on patrol and surveillance and have dealt with more than 2.6 million road accidents, said the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) yesterday.

From June 10, the police decided to launch a month-long campaign to slash the growing death toll caused by road accidents.

Last year the nation had an accident death toll of 100,600.

With the aim of effectively curbing road accidents, local traffic police in many regions such as North China's Tianjin Municipality and Hebei Province have established command centers that supervise and co-ordinate with police officers who patrol the roads.

In Chongqing of Southwest China, traffic police have decided to combine road surveillance with a work safety supervision campaign, which was launched by work safety watchdogs.

In Gansu of Northwest China, the traffic administration has arranged for related police to take the charge of the region's traffic. A large-scale campaign to publicize traffic safety as well as to warn the public of the punishment they face when violating traffic rules has been initiated, said sources with the MPS.

In Hebei, traffic police also enhanced their patrols.

In Hebei's Xingtai, traffic police have dealt with a total of 6,672 traffic accidents from June 12 to 16, suspended 275 drivers and taken 789 vehicles off the road after the drivers were found to have seriously breached regulations, sources said.

(China Daily June 19, 2002)