No funds; Kerala Motor Vehicles Department drops road safety initiatives
Kochi: Despite rising mishaps, the district authorities are being forced to shed most of the road safety initiatives, including road safety awareness classes, for want of funds which calls for formation of a separate council to manage funds with the Kerala Road Safety Authority (KRSA). “We’ve started the road safety awareness classes back in 2009 and hasn’t missed so far. 300 persons used to turn beneficiaries with a week’s class. However, we haven’t received funds for the last 10 months. The building owner locked the ‘class room’ and now there is no way to take the classes,” said a senior MVD official based at North Paravur. When contacted, regional transport officer P.H. Sadiq Ali admitted the “fund shortage” resulted in its safety initiatives being put on the back burner.
“Our focus is to resume the road safety awareness classes to those candidates availing license besides the traffic offenders. For that, we’ve requested a fund of Rs five lakh from the KRSA on a war-footing but we’re yet to get a reply. Other programmes have been temporarily stopped,” the officer said. This year, the Ernakulam regional transport office in January launched an innovative programme to make each and every household aware of the safety procedures and tips while driving vehicles. They started training Kudumbashree co-ordinators on road safety tips who in-turn take classes at local unit levels. An official of the KRSA said the authority is facing a fund shortage and that an amount to the tune of Rs 360 crore is due from the exchequer.
“The KRSA already approached the finance department many times to allot the funds,” he said. Meanwhile, there are demands from various quarters to constitute a separate road safety council to plan and implement road safety projects with effective utilisation of funds. “Currently transport commissioner, entrusted with so many functions, is also the head of the Road Safety Authority. This is the main reason why no effective road safety initiatives like maintenance of CCTV cameras in a city like Kochi are being done. Instead funds are often wasted on exhibitions and awareness classes,” said Road Safety expert and director of Indian Institute of Road Safety Upendra Narayan.
