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Showing posts with label zero accident mission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zero accident mission. Show all posts

Saturday, 5 December 2015

15:36

Rail minister Suresh Prabhu has called for implementation of a Zero Accident Mission

Rail minister Suresh Prabhu has called for implementation of a Zero Accident Mission

The rail ministry’s plan to seek around Rs 1 lakh crore (Rs 1 trillion) funding for the Special Railway Safety Fund from the finance ministry in response to the recent spurt in the number of train accidents seems to have missed out on a crucial affliction — the need to strengthen the operational staffing issues.

The rise in the cases of derailments of late has come at a time the brass at the railway board is gripped in an unusual setting — the absence of a full-time Member (Traffic), who looks after safety related aspects, for more than seven months since February.

Rail minister Suresh Prabhu has called for implementation of a zero accident mission as part of which the ministry will seek the mammoth Rs 1 lakh crore funding for the SRSF.

This includes around Rs 40,000 crore (Rs 400 billion) for elimination of Unmanned Level Crossings alone, which are responsible for more than a half of all the deaths occurring in train accidents.

A similar fund to bolster safety infrastructure was introduced by the government in 2001 to wipe out the accumulated arrears of renewal of over-aged assets including tracks, bridged, signalling gears and rolling stock.

It was created with an initial corpus of Rs 17,000 crore (Rs 170 billion) of which Rs 12,000 crore (Rs 120 billion) had come from the finance ministry as dividend free capital.

The fund was closed in 2008 with its balance of Rs 597 crore (Rs 5.97 billion) merged in the Depreciation Reserve Fund.

Such funding initiatives would require parallel efforts on revamping the railway board for their success.

Currently, additional member-traffic transportation Kundan Sinha is looking after the role of member traffic as additional charge since 1st August.

Before him, additional member-commercial Ajay Shukla held the post of member traffic between February and July.

The reason being, there are not enough general managers from the Indian Railway Traffic Service with the required level of experience at present.

A senior rail ministry official said there is availability of GMs from the traffic service but they lack the required number of years of experience for becoming member-traffic.

“This is just a technical issue.

“It is not a problem as even an officer with additional charge of member-traffic works like a full-fledged member-traffic,” he said.

He added safety-related matters are reported to both the member-traffic and the chairman of the board.

“But actually safety issues are addressed by all the departments including engineering, electrical and mechanical etc.”

At a media interaction last week, that followed rail minister Suresh Prabhu’s emergency meeting with all the GMs of zonal railways on safety, Railway Board chairman A K Mittal had said the overall number of accidents has come down by 25 per cent to 54 in the current fiscal so far.

“But this does not mean the situation is okay.

“We are analysing all the accidents to take corrective action.

“The analysis shows 40 per cent of these accidents were avoidable, meaning they occurred due to system failure including both equipment and employee,” he said, adding the margin to address issues of delays in taking corrective action has shrunk due to high capacity utilisation of the network.

He also said funds were a constraint for system improvement but that issue is being addressed now.

Post the GMs meeting, where Prabhu asked GMs to pull up efforts on safety improvement, the ministry decided to seek assistance from the finance ministry for the SRSF.

This comes within months of the presentation of the rail budget on 26 February in Parliament.

The GMs meeting had followed two train accidents within a day and at least eight derailments in the past nine months of 2015.

Earlier this month, at least 42 people were injured after six coaches of the Chennai-Mangalore Express derailed in Tiruchi near Poovanaur district in Tamil Nadu.

Also, two trains had derailed within minutes at the same spot near Harda in Madhya Pradesh in August claiming 29 lives.

The year 2015 has so far seen eight train accidents because of derailments.
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Friday, 18 September 2015

06:40

Safety needs to be top Priority

Safety needs to be top Priority

Railways on notice

Safety, not bullet trains, needs to be top priority

Almost a year into his tenure as railway minister, Suresh Prabhu, has done what he should have done right after taking charge: called a meeting of the most senior railway officials and told them he will not have any more excuses on safety. The meeting took place in the wake of several railway accidents causing deaths and raising serious safety concerns all around. The glamourous new idea of the government has been creating a diamond quadrilateral of high-speed train links, and Mr Prabhu's public pronouncements till date have mostly dealt with the need to find fresh big-ticket investments. 

There has been no commensurate public concern over too many rail accidents - although introducing bullet trains and the like without improving safety can only lead to more serious accidents. Yes, the railways does need to modernise, which does not come cheap; and investment and safety are conceptually linked if new technology is considered as a route to greater safety. But whenever there is talk of addressing the poor safety record of the Indian Railways, all that the leadership can think of by way of a solution is big-ticket investment. 
Even as Mr Prabhu expressed his exasperation over the continuing spate of accidents, the railway board chairman spoke of a Rs 1-lakh-crore safety plan to be put before the Union Cabinet. Of course there is a need to invest for creating necessary infrastructure to eliminate level crossings and renew ageing tracks and rolling stock. But the railway establishment should know that safety can be improved also without spending a paisa more - by toning up the way the organisation functions.

The need of the hour is to ensure that well-established safety practices and drills which have been allowed to be run down are again followed with alacrity. The drill of inspecting tracks before trains are allowed to go through has become lax. This drill helps detect breaches in tracks caused through ageing, sabotage, or when flash floods wash them away. If there are sections where the traffic is too heavy for this kind of inspection to be undertaken with the necessary periodicity, Mr Prabhu must cancel some passenger trains on the ground that the present traffic density is unsustainable. 

Several accidents take place because of human error. The only way this can be undone is by motivating the staff better - which cannot happen unless they see the minister and top officials leading from the front. The minister has reminded top railway officials that he has already delegated substantial autonomy to them and it is high time they were held accountable. He has given them six months to act and underlined the need for safety audits by neighbouring zones (not a zone auditing itself) - but he should have done this six months ago.

The reality is that there is no sign that the railways today is a more toned up organisation. For the past several months, it has not been able to appoint a full-time member on its board to oversee traffic operations - a responsibility that includes overseeing safety as well. An additional member is looking after this crucial portfolio. A certain amount of outsourcing of passenger services is being done with immediate improvement in delivery - but subsequent backsliding.

The performance of outsourced agencies needs monitoring; but in a business-as-usual scenario, that does not take place. More than anything else, railway safety today needs to be a greater priority.

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Wednesday, 16 September 2015

07:10

Railways to seek Rs1 trillion ‘special safety fund’ from finance ministry

Railways to seek Rs1 trillion ‘special safety fund’ from finance ministry

New Delhi: India’s railways ministry plans to ask the ministry of finance to sanction Rs.1 trillion as a “special safety fund” for track renewal and maintenance, upgrading bridges and removal of unmanned level crossings—partly a reaction to recent accidents and partly an effort to reinforce deficient safety infrastructure.

Railways minister Suresh Prabhu called a meeting of railways zonal general managers on Tuesday in the backdrop of recent accidents. The emergency meeting was called after Prabhu returned from his five-day visit of Japan and South Korea on Sunday. The meeting was also attended by minister of state for railways Manoj Sinha and other members of the Railway Board.

At a media interaction after the meeting, chairman of the Railway Board A.K. Mital admitted that 40% of railway accidents in the current fiscal year were avoidable. “These happened due to system, human, equipment or maintenance failure,” he said, adding that the number of accidents, however, has come down.

Since 1 April, there have been 54 railways accidents compared with 77 that took place in the corresponding period of the last fiscal year. Around 40% of the accidents this year have happened due to derailment and another 40% at unmanned level crossings. “We intend to address these two areas through the fund,” said Mital. In the last five years, around 5,900 unmanned crossings have been converted into manned ones; there are around 10,000 more unmanned crossings across the country. The ministry is in talks with Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and Indian Space Research Organisation to develop solutions to alert people of approaching trains at unmanned crossings.

A railways spokesperson who was present at the meeting said Prabhu told all officials to conduct safety audits and take action on the audit reports. “The minister said that there have been shortcomings in inspection which need to be addressed. He also said that safety is non-negotiable and laxity, unacceptable.”

The ministry has fired 97 people in the last one year, holding them responsible for railway accidents. “In some of the cases, it was found that response to take corrective actions was slow,” said Mital.

The railways, in a white paper published in February 2015, said it would work towards reducing the number of accidents to zero. However, there have been various train accidents in the recent past, including derailment of a chartered train between the Kalka and Shimla rail tracks, in which two UK citizens lost their lives and the derailment of Secunderabad-Mumbai Lokmanya Tilak Terminus Duronto Express at Martur between Shahbad and Gulbarga in Karnataka during the intervening night between 12 September and 13 September.

During his visit to Japan, Prabhu discussed the participation of Japanese railways and Japanese companies in various areas of Indian railways with the aim of modernization and technology upgradation. He also discussed their role in helping Indian railways succeed in its zero-accident mission.

 Source :Livemint.
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Tuesday, 15 September 2015

07:24

Railway Minister calls Emergency Meeting with all GMs on Tuesday to review Safety Measures

Railway Minister calls Emergency Meeting with all GMs on Tuesday to review Safety Measures

Taking Serious Note of a Spate of Train Accidents in the recent past, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has called an Emergency Meeting of General Managers of all 17 Zonal Railways on Tuesday at New Delhi, to review Safety Measures

New Delhi: Taking serious note of a spate of train accidents recently, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has called an emergency meeting of general managers of all 17 Zones here on Tuesday to review safety measures.

The meeting is also expected to discuss an action plan and implementation strategy to make rail travel safer for passengers, sources said today.

“Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu has expressed his displeasure over the series of train mishaps recently. He has convened a meeting all general managers of 17 zonal Railways on September 15 to review safety related issues,” sources said.

Prabhu along with his junior minister Manoj Sinha and full Railway Board will address the meeting, they said adding, “The Minister has been emphasising on zero accident mission and giving top priority to safety.”

Meanwhile, Prabhu, who was on week-long tour to Japan and South Korea returned to the capital today, sources said.

Of late, Railways safety record has come under question with spate of train accidents.

Two British nationals were killed and 10 others injured yesterday when three coaches of a toy train that was carrying a group of tourists from Britain derailed near Parwanoo between the Kalka and Taksal station.

Earlier the same day, two passengers were killed and seven others injured when nine coaches of Mumbai bound Duranto Express from Secunderabad derailed near Kalaburgi in Karnataka on Saturday wee hours.

Late last month, a speeding granite-laden truck rammed into Bangalore-Nanded Express train after breaking the closed gate at a level crossing in Anantapur district on August 24 killing six persons and injuring two.

On August 4, 29 people were killed when two express trains passing each other derailed while crossing a railway bridge struck by flash floods in Harda district of Madhya Pradesh, sending 17 bogies and one engine tumbling into a rain-swollen river.
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Wednesday, 9 September 2015

18:08

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu Holds Discussion with the Japanese Prime Minister

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu Holds Discussion with the Japanese Prime Minister 

Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu had Ministerial and High-level consultations in Japan on 7, 8 & 9 September 2015. These included bilateral meetings with the Japanese Prime Minister Mr. Shinzō Abe, Deputy-Prime Minister & Finance Minister Mr. Taro Aso, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) Mr. Yoichi Miyazawa, Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Mr. Akihiro Ohta and Health, Labour & Welfare Minister Mr. Yasuhisa Shiozaki and senior officials. 

Shri Suresh Prabhu also held meetings with heads of leading financial institutions. He highlighted that railways would be the next major destination for infrastructure investment in India and invited investment from Japan. Participation of Japanese railways and Japanese companies in various areas of Indian railways with the aim of modernization and technology up-gradation was also emphasized in the discussions. The items discussed and agreed in principle in the above meetings included: 

1.Technology Cooperation with Japan for modernization and upgradation of Indian railways. 

2. Participation in Indian Railways' $140 billion five-year action plan. 

3. Participation and assistance of Japanese railways and companies in zero accident mission of Indian railways 

4. An MOU between Research Designs & Standards Organization (RDSO), Lucknow and RTRI (Railway Technical Research Institute) Japan. 

5. Assistance for development of a legal and regulatory framework on HSR. 

6. Use of Japanese expertise and technology in solving problems of sanitation including the development of waterless, odorless toilets in trains and in stations. 

7. An official mission from Japan to India to study the opportunities for industries in the railway station development of the identified 400 stations. 

 Source :PIBNEWS.

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