By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI: Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways Shri Nitin Gadkari has called for reducing road accidents by half by the year 2025. He suggested that there should be a 3-days mandatory training of engineers of ministry, NHAI, PWD and various agencies related to road construction for awareness about road safety. Addressing the 19th Meeting of National Road Safety Council (NRSC), the Minister said that reducing accidents is not a gradual process, every stakeholder should take it on top priority with immediate effect. He gave the example of Sweden where zero tolerance towards road accident reduction is adopted. It was attended by Transport Ministers from the States of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, DGPs or their representatives from states/UTs, and various other official and non-official members of NRSC.
The Minister said, India is constructing 30 kilometres of roads everyday which is a great achievement during this pandemic time. He asked the State governments to motivate people for safer movement on road, the involvement of NGOs should be appreciated in this concern. He suggested involving social media on major basis for awareness and education about road safety measures. He highlighted that there is a committee of MPs related to road safety, and requested all the MLAs to also focus on the issue of accident reduction in their constituencies.
Ministry of Road Transport & Highways has formulated National Road Safety Council to advise on all the matters pertaining to planning and coordination of policies, standards of safety in the road transport sector, to formulate and recommend road safety programme for implementation by the State Road Safety Organization, to suggest areas for research and development to improve safety aspects in the road transport sector including maintenance of statistics of road accident and their analysis, to generally oversee and monitor at the central level the road safety measures undertaken by the State/UT agencies.
Vivek Kishore, Director (Road Safety), Ministry of Road Transport & Highways explained in his presentation about the black spot rectification procedure and the status of rectification on National Highways. Various measures taken by Ministry of Road Transport & Highways to reduce accidents and fatalities, Schemes of the Ministry and Features added in Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act 2019 for Strengthening Road Safety was also explained by Director him. A small presentation was also done on the work of development and implementation of Integrated Road Accident Data base (iRAD) through IIT, Madras and NICSI to establish a central repository for reporting, management and analysis of road accidents data.
The Transport Minister from Bihar explained about various initiatives taken by the state government like “Sanyukt Jaanch Dal” (Unified Investigation Agency) for road safety audit, automated driving training centre, 40 hospitals are upgraded to trauma centres and 434 people are awarded as Good Samaritans. Other members of NRSC gave suggestions about improvement of road safety situation by taking various measures including changes in the law, etc.
The Minister of State-RT&H Gen (Retd) Dr V K Singh asked the states to enforce various measures as best practices in their states at their own level also. He assured all the members of NRSC that the suggestions submitted by them would be looked into and their implementation will be taken accordingly.
Gadkari has stressed upon the need for making the public transport people friendly, safe, affordable, accessible, cost effective and pollution free. The Minister also highlighted the need of implementing the ITS in the operation as well as the National Common Mobility Card in order to make its operation fully digitised and efficient.
Addressing the 40th Meeting of Transport Development Council last evening, Shri Gadkari said that States must increasingly adopt the alternative fuels in the operation of busses and stressed the use of CNG, LNG, Electric vehicles and ethanol blended fuels. Transport Ministers from several states including Assam, AP, Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Goa, MP and Mizoram participated in the meeting, along with their Transport Secretaries and Transport Commissioners.
Shri Gadkari assured the states of his full support and cooperation in their endeavours to make public transport modern and efficient gave the example of the model of Transport for London. He said that state must avail all the schemes of central government such as FAME-II to gradually shift to electric vehicles as their cost would come down drastically in near future. He also stressed upon the need of innovation by the states and the need for improving the quality of buses and the public transport so that peoples are attracted to avail their services by shunning the personal vehicles.
Union Minister of State for RTH Gen (Retd) Dr V K Singh stressed upon the adoption of alternative fuels such as CNG, LNG and ethanol etc. which will not only reduce the vehicular pollution but would also save the precious forex. He desired that Rules on Good Samaritan Guidelines would be speedily implemented by the States in letter so that people would readily come forward to help the accident victims.
Secretary (RT&H) Shri Giridhar Aramane said that COVID pandemic has affected the life very badly. STUs and transports have been hit very hard are still struggling to recover. He said, the Ministry has made several initiatives to mitigate the effect of Covid pandemic on Transport sector, such as providing financial assistance to States/UTs for sanitation of public transport, coordinated with Transport Associations to facilitate the movement of trucks for essential goods, suspending the collection of user-fee at all toll plazas and extending the validity of various documents related to transport till 31st March, 2021.
Joint Secretary-RTH Shri Amit Varadan brought out the various initiative of the Ministry in last one years and briefed about the several policies, rules as well as the new initiative which are under various stage of finalisation. Features of several important schemes such as MoRTH sponsored scheme for setting up monitoring centres as per AIS 140 Specifications, in States, Accessible India Campaign for Public Transport, Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines-2020, Voluntary Vehicle Scrapping Policy, All India Tourist Vehicles Authorisation and Permit Rules, 2019, scheme for Cashless treatment of road accident victims and Alternate fuel regulations in the automotive sector were also highlighted and explained by the officials of MoRTH for the benefit of State officials.
Ministers of Transport from the States praised the dynamic and decisive leadership of Nitin Gadhkari and praised initiatives of the Ministry on construction of roads, Road safety and development of Road Transport sector. They complemented the Minister for bringing out the Motor vehicles (amendment) Act, 2019 and its speedy implementation.
