Guwahati, August 2: Amid increasing incidence of mishaps on roads and highways, the State Road Safety Council (SRSC), Assam held a meeting and took a number of key decisions to make roads in the state safer.
The meeting was chaired by state transport minister Parimal Suklabaidya, who is also the chairman of the council, at the Assam Administrative Staff College here.
During the course of the three-hour meeting, Suklabaidya directed the senior officials of the transport department and other line departments to take measures to check over-speeding of vehicles, which was the cause of 70 percent of road accidents.
The minister instructed the panchayat and rural development department to conduct awareness drives amongst bike riders and vehicle drivers at the gaon panchayat level in coordination with the respective DTOs.
Suklabaidya advised the council to primarily focus on ‘man to man’ contact to make road safety awareness campaigns more effective.
He asked the officials to put up road signs in Assamese and other languages more widely along the roads for better understanding by motorists.
In the same vein, he instructed the SRSC to design vehicles with road safety messages and audio visual systems.
Suklabaidya asked the NHAI, NHIDCL and PWD (NH) authorities to repair the potholes to prevent road accidents.
The minister also reviewed the status of black spots on the national highways with the officials of NHAI, NHIDCL and PWD(NH), while directing the NHAI to organise awareness camps on a regular basis.
The status of trauma centres coming up soon across the state was also reviewed by the minister with officials of the health and family welfare department.
On the other hand, the minister directed the member secretary of SRSC to monitor the proper functioning of interceptor vehicles and ensure that the vehicles cover the rural areas too.
He directed the transport department to work in sync with the Assam Police to ensure strict vigilance over wearing of helmets and checking over-speeding of vehicles.
The meeting further decided that SRSC would allot interceptor vehicles to Assam Police, induct support staff in the district road safety committees to ensure better coordination between the state level and district level committees and allot breath analysers to the excise department.
Besides, the meeting also decided to deploy personnel on roads to ensure strict checking and take punitive action against people who drink and drive.
“We will be focusing more on the things that are essential on the roads to avert accidents. This includes following up with the Assam Police and other stakeholders for putting up signboards, road signals, speed breakers, reflectors, cat eyes, dividers,” a transport department official said.
He added that with proper infrastructure and awareness among motorists, the rate of road accidents would certainly come down.
The meeting was also attended by secretary of transport department cum member secretary of SRSC, Adil Khan, and officials from PWD, health, ASTC, APDCL, NIC, excise, Assam Police, NHAI, NHIDCL and other related departments.
The transport minister also held a meeting with IIT-Guwahati to discuss the proposed road safety conclave to be jointly organised by the transport department and IIT-Guwahati.
It may be mentioned that the state transport department has collaborated with IIT-Guwahati and nominated the latter as its knowledge partner.
Accordingly, IIT-G will help the transport department carry out research related to road data and induce new technologies to avoid road mishaps.