“The security of passengers is our topmost priority. We are investing billions of rupees on railway safety which is a reflection of our commitment towards safety of the rail network,” Prasad said while presenting the Railway Budget for 2008-09 in Parliament.
He said Railways is taking due precaution to make adequate provision under Depreciation Reserve Fund (DRF) for timely replacement of overage assets. “In this context, I have increased the provision in DRF to Rs 5,450 crore in 2007-08 and Rs 7,000 crore in 2008-09,” he said.
Besides, 5,700 vacant posts of constables and 993 posts of sub-inspectors in the Railway Protection Force will be filled up through a comprehensive recruitment drive by May 2008. Of this, five per cent posts for constables and 10 per cent for sub-inspectors would be reserved for women. Prasad further said an integrated security plan has been drawn up to strengthen railway security through installation of close circuit TVs at important stations, deploying metal detectors, baggage screening system and explosive detection and disposal systems.
Prasad said thanks to his Ministry’s sustained efforts the number of train accidents have come down to an “all-time minimum” of 195 in 2006-07 from 234 in 2005-06. Despite increase in traffic, the consequential train accidents per million train kilometre have come down to 0.23 in 2006-07 as compared to 0.28 in 2005-06.
Work on replacing 16,538 kms of overage track and overage signals at 2,359 stations and rehabilitation of 2,251 bridges utilising Special Railway Safety Fund would be completed by the end of this year.
Multi-pronged
With a view to reduce human failure and strengthen rail safety, a multi-pronged scheme has been prepared envisaging automatic safety devices like anti-collision device, acoustic bearing detectors, digital ultrasonic flaw detecting machine, ultrasonic rail testing car and track monitoring car.
The anti-collision device system would be extended to the Southern, South Central and South Western railway in the next two years.
