NEW DELHI: In the wake of recent derailments, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal held 15 hours long marathon meeting with General Managers and called upon all 17 zonal railways to give top priority to safety of passengers and focus on using modern technology to avoid human errors.
Asserting that stringent action will taken against defaulters, Goyal held discussions on human resources, developmental work, cleanliness, passenger amenities, plan to ramp-up production units, increasing transparency, induction of new technology and reforms in railways.
“The minister was very particular that zonal railways should be liberal by providing required traffic blocks and focus on timely asset management. He also asked for getting rails from other vendors to fulfill the shortage of rails,” said sources, who attended the meeting.
Railways ministry directed the railways officials to explore better technology for rakes than the existing LHB coaches that don’t climb and turn turtle upon derailment. Railway has already set a target of shifting to LHB coaches from existing ICF by next year.
“The minister wants to explore better technology for coaches available globally as the LHB coach technology is also two decades old. He wants that railway should invest in future technology and asked officials to look for modern technologies,” he said.
On the passenger amenities front, there was discussion of removing one generator car from Rajdhanis and replacing it with passenger coach to accommodate more people on some of the busiest routes.
Recent train accidents have raised serious concerns about safety of passengers and poor state of railway infrastructure. In August this year, Utkal Express derailed in Uttar Pradesh killing 23 passengers and prima facie reason was due to failure of the railway staff as they did not put any caution while carrying the maintenance work.