Railway Ministry sleeps as 480 die since 2008….Ashutosh Kumar
Anti-collision devices lying unused for 12 years due to paucity of funds
Anti-collision devices lying unused for 12 years due to paucity of funds
The deaths of 470 passengers in train accidents since 2008 failed to wake up the railway ministry from its slumber. Ten others lost their lives after the Chennai Beach-Vellore local rammed into the Arakkonam-Katpadi passenger train in Tamil Nadu on Tuesday.
Railway minister Dinesh Trivedi attributed the mishap to human error, but the fact is that the ministry has done little to ensure passenger safety.
In December 1999, the Konkan Railway developed anti-collision devices (ACD) to prevent accidents, but to date they have not been installed in trains due to paucity of funds.
The ministry has exhausted the Rs17,000 crore dedicated corpus formed in 2003 for passenger safety. The railways is even struggling for funds to arrange a recruitment drive.There is a shortage of 13,102 locomotive pilots in the country as of now. In other safety categories, the number of vacancies is a whopping 76,000.