NEW DELHI: An internal assessment by railways has found serious flaws in safety audits done by zonal railways thus posing threat to safety of lakhs of passengers. It was found that safety audits are conducted like a routine inspection and system failures and generic shortcomings are being neglected by the railways. These were found to be lagging in detecting overall lapses and failures on sections and stations.
The loopholes projected in the assessment has now made AS Upadhyay, Advisor (Safety), Railway Board writing to General Managers of 17 zonal railways to ensure that safety audits are completed in systematic manner and compliance report signed by Chief Safety Officer is submitted to the Railway Board. Two types of audits are conducted by the zonal railways. Intra Railway Safety Audit —conducted once every two months in each division and Inter Railway Safety Audit —conducted once every six months. It is conducted by a team of five Senior Administrative Grade officers of Civil, Mechanical, Signal, Electrical and Safety departments along with their inspectors. CSO is the convener of the committee.
“Over a period of time the safety audits are now conducted in a routine manner like any other normal inspection. Instead of identifying the system failures and generic shortcomings, the safety audits generally talks of the individual failures,” said Upadhyay. Safety audits were started in zonal railways with a view that it will be different from normal inspection as it involves the process (flaws in systems) approach to the items inspected.