The traffic is thick along Jalan Sultan Ismail. It is right after work and the sun is fast setting. Hungry drivers are fuming along this notoriously congested road. By the roadside, our indolent traffic policemen still chat away in small groups, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings.

But road users beware! These cops are not blind to unsuspecting drivers. At major road junctions that are already rendered chaotic by the sheer amount of vehicles, they patiently wait for drivers to - whether intentionally or not - commit offences. And once drivers do just that, the heavy arm of law enforcement will be upon them in a flash.

This was exactly what happened to me a few days ago. As I drove home along jam-packed Jalan Sultan Ismail, I passed at least three groups of traffic policemen, all of whom were to be found at major junctions.

Instead of manually overriding the already helpless lights and relieving the gridlock, they were engaged in idle chat and joking away among themselves, turning a deaf ear to the impatient honking of countless vehicles stuck along that road.

My car was traversing one of those junctions after a green light, when I was forced to stop abruptly due to a sudden backlog of vehicles in front of me right after the lights. The junction had a yellow box. The lights remained green for at least a minute but I was unable to move an inch.

The lights then turned red. Immediately, out sprang a cop pompously notifying me I had faulted and that he had to issue me a summons. I tried to justify the situation, but no amount of explanation would please him as he seemed bent on issuing a fine at all costs.

For heaven's sake, any respectable driver knows it's illegal to deliberately halt in a yellow box, what more in front of a group of traffic policemen. If the cops had been performing their duties in easing the traffic, vehicles would not have become stuck in yellow boxes.

It's disgusting to observe the supposedly honorable traffic police force having a couldn't-care-less attitude to congested traffic, and yet pounce on innocent drivers who unintentionally break traffic regulations that could have been avoided if the traffic police had carried out their duties in the first place.

Maybe the traffic cops only care about the weekly quotas they have to meet. Why not try nabbing illegal racers who terrorise our neighborhoods at 3am in the morning? But I guess that'll be a tad harder than catching innocent drivers along congested roads.