Gadkari asks States to prioritize road safety at National Road Safety Council meeting
Ten News Network
Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways & MSME, Nitin Gadkari has called upon state governments to accord top priority to road safety. He asked the State governments to motivate people for safer movement on road, with involvement of NGOs, involving social media on major basis for awareness and education about road safety measures. He was addressing the 19thMeeting of National Road Safety Council (NRSC) yesterday at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. The council meeting, was chaired by the Minister, while the Vice Chairman was Gen. (Dr.) V.K.Singh, Minister of State (Road Transport & Highways). It was attended by Transport Ministers of States of Andhra Pradesh & Bihar, Secretary MoRT&H, DGPs or their representatives from states/UTs and various other official and non-official members of NRSC. The meeting of the Council takes place even as the country is marking its first-ever month-long Road Safety Month, which began on 18th January.
Gadkari gave the example of Sweden where zero tolerance towards road accident reduction is adopted. He suggested that there should be a 3-day mandatory training of engineers of ministry, NHAI, PWD and various agencies related to road construction for awareness about road safety. Pointing out that there is a committee of MPs related to road safety, he requested all the MLAs to also focus on the issue of accident reduction in their constituencies
The State Transport Minister of Bihar explained about various initiatives taken by the state government like “Sanyukt Jaanch Dal” (Unified Investigation Agency) for road safety audit, automated driving training centres, 40 hospitals being upgraded to trauma centres and 434 people being 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.
Ministry of Road Transport & Highways has set up the National Road Safety Council with the mandate 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”.
