Railways To Carry Out Special Safety Drives To Ensure Precautions To Be Followed

New Delhi: To enhance the safety and security of passengers’ journeys through trains, the railway will carry out special safety drives to ensure that the precautions are being followed by the employees while executing the maintenance works.

As per railway officials, the railway has been emphasising the safety of train operations, following which special drives are to be carried out by the officials or supervisors on precautions to be followed by the employees and contract workers while executing the maintenance works and on loading/unloading activities.

Arun Kumar Jain, General Manager, South Central Railways, has instructed the officials to focus on crew working hours, do meticulous analysis on the preparation of duty rosters of loco pilots, assistant loco pilots and guards to minimise the crew working hours and to provide the proper rest at the proper time.

Similarly, several zones are working to complete fencing work along the tracks to prevent stray cattle from coming onto the tracks and getting stuck between moving trains. “Once fencing work gets completed, the safety aspects along the tracks are improved, apart from the increase in speeding of the trains and punctuality also gets improved further,” Railway officials said.

The railway has asked the officials to identify the vulnerable locations first and plan to execute to complete the fencing works in the target time, which will improve safety in train operations by minimising trespassing of cattle and vehicles.

To enhance the security arrangements, Manoj Yadava, Director General of the Railway Protection Force (RPF), reviewed the ongoing up-gradation of infrastructure and functioning within the Northeast Frontier zone, which is a strategically sensitive zone of Indian Railways, shares International Borders with several neighbouring countries including Bangladesh, Bhutan, China and Myanmar.

Seeing the importance, Yadav emphasised strengthening intelligence gathering, enhancing coordination with other law enforcement agencies and leveraging technology for better surveillance and monitoring.

To reinforce the importance of continual up-gradation of infrastructure, training and vigilance to ensure the safety of passengers, the railway property and national interests in this vital region, the officials said.

In line with Indian Railways’ emphasis to enhance safety and improve infrastructure, the South Eastern Railway will undertake critical safety-related modernisation work between Rourkela and Bondamunda from April 21 to 26, the railway officials said.

To facilitate the seamless execution of this project, the changes are being implemented with the utmost priority on passenger safety and minimising inconvenience to the travelling public.

On Monday, Members of Parliament held a meeting with Southern Railway officials on safety issues. MPs belonging to both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, T.R. Baalu, Dayanidhi Maran, Kathir Anand, G.Selvam, R. Girirajan, Kanimozhi, NVN Somu and Sasikanth Senthil discussed the recent development of different passenger amenity works at stations and highlighted the ongoing infrastructural developmental works that are in progress and those completed recently.

MPs also offered their valuable suggestions for the improvement of services and development of railways in general and aspects related to train services in their respective constituencies.