Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Oct 6: Several key announcements on ensuring road safety made by none else than Governor of the State have fallen victim to the bureaucratic dissonance despite the fact that there is no noticeable improvement in checking loss of precious lives in the tragedies on the roads in Jammu and Kashmir. The intensity of dilly-dallying approach can be gauged from the fact that the officers of the concerned departments are still non-committal in giving practical shape to the decisions in a time-bound manner.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that Governor N N Vohra while running the affairs of the Government in early last year had convened a special meeting of the J&K Road Safety Council on February 14, 2015 in order to deliberate upon the grave issue of loss of lives on roads due to tragic accidents.
He had explicitly told the concerned authorities to finalize the Road Safety Policy and create Road Safety Fund to finance road safety activities in entire Jammu and Kashmir on large scale. Moreover, directions were issued for conduct of safety audit of all the roads in the State to identify the black spots for initiating corrective measures so that poor condition of roads doesn’t lead to more accidents in future.
“Though the senior officers of the Transport Department claim that Road Safety Policy has been approved by the Government but astonishingly it has not been put in public domain till date and the website of the Motor Vehicle Department still hosts only draft that too for inviting comments”, sources said and asked what purpose the policy will serve when it remains confined to the official record and without being brought to the notice of the people.
Similarly, as per the version of the senior officers of the Transport Department, Road Safety Fund has been created by the Finance Department but this Fund will not become operational till the Government comes up with Road Safety Act or carry out necessary amendments in Motor Vehicle Act to suggest the mechanism for its usage, sources regretted. However, the amendments in Motor Vehicle Act or enactment of Road Safety Act are not possible till the next Session of Legislature.
“Had there been any seriousness on the part of Finance Department or Transport Department a bill seeking either amendment or proposing new law should have been moved and passed in the Session of State Legislature held in June this year”, sources said, adding “in this way the creation of Road Safety Fund has remained only a futile exercise”.
Similarly, much thrust is being laid in the official meetings about implementation of Road Accident Data Management System (RADMS) in Jammu and Kashmir but even basic exercise in this regard has not been conducted till date.
Sources said that in a meeting of the Road Safety Council convened by Chief Secretary B R Sharma in the month of August this year, this issue was again deliberated upon and accordingly a committee comprising of Transport Commissioner and IGP Traffic was constituted to work out the requirements for developing relevant software, establishing servers and allied hardware for data storage and analysis.
However, till date this committee has not furnished Action Taken Report either to the State Road Safety Council or to the top authorities of the Transport Department prompting the latter to issue fresh directions to the committee, sources said, adding “the dilly-dallying approach is notwithstanding the fact that Government itself admits that adoption of RADMS will result in reduction of road accident fatalities and lead to better traffic management, better roads and increased road safety awareness among the people besides availability of accurate road accident information”.
“Likewise, a number of times it has been officially stated that Road Safety Chapters would be compulsorily incorporated in the curriculum of some classes through J&K State Board of School Education but when this will become reality has not been revealed till date”, sources said.
Quoting another instance of non-serious approach towards the road safety aspect, sources said, “despite being aware of the fact that Motor Vehicle Department is reeling under huge shortage of manpower particularly in hilly districts of the State and the same is creating hurdles in checking violations of Motor Vehicle Act all the concerned authorities are soft-paddling on creation of posts for this vital department”.
“The issue is yet to be sorted out between Finance and Transport Departments and unless both come on common ground vis-à-vis number of posts the requirement of Motor Vehicle Department cannot be met with”, sources said.
According to the official figures, as against the requirement of 1023 manpower to ensure effective functioning of offices of RTO Kashmir, RTO Jammu, RTO Kathua and ARTOs, at present the Motor Vehicle Department is having only 286 sanctioned posts. About 19 districts of the State have less than 10 sanctioned posts against huge requirement to ensure effective functioning of offices of ARTOs as well as to ensure proper checking of violations of Motor Vehicle Act.
“Even there is not much progress on conducting safety audit of the roads which otherwise is imperative to improve the condition of roads at vulnerable spots”, sources further regretted.
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