Despite losing around 40,000 lives to accidents during an electoral term between two Assembly elections, political fronts are callously apathetic towards safety aspects.
Making Kerala a safer place does not figure anywhere in the poll manifesto of major political fronts. Though the LDF and the UDF have listed their priority proposals for the next five years, safety has not found any mention in it. They missed the huge opportunity to make the State a safer place to live in, said a disaster risk reduction expert after evaluating the manifestos.
The data available with the National Crime Records Bureau indicated that every year around 8,000 lives are lost in various accidents in Kerala.
The apathy of the political fronts to the issue implied that they did not have any plans to deal with the issue or they did not care about the lives lost, highlighting the need for mainstreaming the disaster management efforts, an expert said.
According to Muralee Thummarukudy, the chief of Disaster Risk Reduction of the UN Environment Programme, accident deaths were not caused by a catastrophic failure of a machine but series of human errors, each of which were preventable with a little more training, supervision, and attention.
Mr. Thummarukudy felt that it was “not necessary that the number of deaths grow every year with increase in population or number of vehicles or growth of construction.”
Accident rates in Kerala are often 400 per cent higher than that of countries with good health and safety practices. Observing the good practices can bring down deaths to less than 50 per cent in the next five years thus saving 20,000 lives. Establishing a dedicated institution to coordinate safety would be a good start, Mr. Thummarukudy said. Sekhar L. Kuriakose, head of the State Emergency Operations Centre, felt that the State was paying a heavy price for its complacency towards rules, regulations, and even safety directions. Most of the accidental deaths could be averted by paying attention to the safety guidelines.
‘‘As a society, Kerala is willing to cross the threshold of calculated risks at all instances, which is also evident at the recent firecracker accident at Paravur,” Dr. Kuriakose said. Road traffic accidents turned out to be the biggest killer in Kerala followed by drowning, falls from height or into a pit, fire, rail-related incidents, and electrocution. Road accidents accounted for more than half the number of accidental deaths. For every accident that causes a death on Kerala roads, there are possibly five others suffering due to grievous injuries, and enduring even life-long consequences, noted another expert.
Drowning rarely got the required attention as majority of the accidents were not caused in boat accidents but in independent accidents. The deaths get less media attention as it happened in dispersed locations. There was no single agency in Kerala to track drowning, he said.
