HYDERABAD: The Road Safety Council, set up by the State government in 2015, has met only thrice so far despite being headed by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao himself. And, the deliberations on setting up trauma centres along the highways, constituting a road safety fund and reviewing the conditions of roads still hang in the air.
Did this laxity in meeting regularly and devising workable plans lead to the Kondagattu accident? The accident, according to preliminary reports, exposed the failure of the roads & buildings department to place crash guards, identify black spots and coordinate with other departments to make roads safe for travel.
According to the information provided by officials, the council was formed in 2015 in compliance with the Supreme Court guidelines. Its tenure ended on December 31, 2017 and needed to be renewed but it has not been done for ten months now.
“The council met for three times with the transport minister presiding over the meetings. There were some deliberations but implementation needed a push. For instance, the Road Safety Act is yet to be enforced and the Road Safety Fund yet to be created,” said an official of the transport department.
The primary motive for setting up the council was to ensure coordination among various departments, explained K Vinod Kumar, chief functionary, Indian Federation of Road Safety. “The roads and buildings department was supposed to be the lead agency of the council. But no official order has been given in that regard. Though deliberations took place, they have not been converted into workable policies,” he said. “Auditing of the roads is important and that clearly has been neglected.”
It was decided that there should be a trauma centre along the highways for every 50 km but there are only four in State at present near Adilabad, Nizamabad, Kamareddy, Mahbubnagar.