Transport Minister A.K. Saseendran has said that the Safe Kerala Project being implemented to check road accidents will be extended to all the 14 districts of the State after setting up 85 enforcement squads.
The Cabinet on Wednesday approved the creation of 262 posts in the Motor Vehicles Department – 10 Regional Transport Officers, 65 Motor Vehicle Inspectors, and 187 Assistant Motor Vehicle Inspectors – for this purpose, Mr. Saseendran told a new conference here on Thursday.
Now, 34 enforcement squads functioned in the State led by an independent Road Safety Commissioner. Earlier this post was handled by the Transport Commissioner. The squads would patrol all major roads round-the-clock to help accident victims and to keep a stringent check on rash driving. GPS tracking system and surveillance cameras with video recording would be part of the project.
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Mr. Saseendran said that the services of all government departments including police, fire and rescue, national highway, revenue, health, BSNL, KSEB, KWA, forests, excise, railway and irrigation and airport authorities, trauma care units and ambulance operators would be utilised for the project. Control rooms would be set up in all districts, he said.
UN project
He said that the safe zone project launched by the MVD and the State Road Safety Authority on the main trunk roads leading to Sabarimala had been a huge success earlier. So the government decided to implement the Safe Kerala Project on the basis of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011 - 2020 officially proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly to reduce road deaths worldwide. The project would be launched soon after working out the modalities. The funds for the project would be mobilised from the fines imposed on the erring motorists, he said.
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Kerala is among the States having high road accident rate in the country with 45,000 cases reported annually in the past few years.