The Hindu : 10-year Corporate Safety Plan for rlys.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 20, 2003

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National

10-year Corporate Safety Plan for rlys.

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 19. The Government today presented to Parliament a 10-year Corporate Safety Plan of Indian Railways envisaging an expenditure of Rs. 31, 835 crores besides development of appropriate technology for higher level of safety in train operation.

Presenting the plan, the Railway Minister, Nitish Kumar, said that Indian Railways, as announced by the Prime Minister in his Independence Day address, would go for technology mission on railway safety in collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology, IIT Kanpur, and the consortium of industries for developing appropriate technology.

Mr. Kumar said the Rs.31,835-crore plan includes funds already available under the non-lapsable Special Railway Safety Fund (SRSF) and the Railway Safety Fund.

Stepping up the non-budgetary initiatives is also contemplated to meet additional requirements for money, he said indicating that a special safety scheme may also be formulated with the assistance of the Planning Commission and the Finance Ministry.

The need for the corporate plan, as commended by the H. R. Khanna Railway Safety Review Committee, has been felt for quite some time so as to have a safety blueprint on technological inputs, work culture, managerial focus and required investments, he said.

The Minister said that at the time of presentation of the White Paper on safety on the Indian Railways to Parliament in April he had offered to review the safety performance in terms of accidents during the last four decades with special reference to the last decade.

This endeavour was to minimise fatalities and the plan objectives could be treated as an "intermediate stage in our efforts to realise a vision of accident-free and casualty-free railway system,'' he said.

"Achieving a situation of accident-free system was a Herculean task. Yet, a realistic and analytical approach had been adopted while planning all necessary steps projecting the required investments in this labour intensive, resource-strapped mammoth organisation."

Investment policy and norms are getting re-focussed in this pursuit and creation of the SRSF was the first step towards ensuring that safety is not compromised because of resource problems, he said.

To give more and more safety shelter, he said, "it appears necessary to reorient our investment policies and sustain the system by not permitting any accumulation of arrears of replacement at any stage.''

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