GUWAHATI, Aug 4 - Transport Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary chaired a virtual meeting of the State Road Safety Council with all the stakeholders and other departments today. He directed them to take steps to control and reduce road accidents and resultant fatalities.
He called upon the stakeholders to involve local community volunteers to save the lives of accident victims by providing necessary help during the golden hour. In this regard, the DTOs have already started engaging local youth and training them as Path Suraksha Mitra.
Road fatalities in the State are on a declining trend since January and the Minister emphasised strict enforcement to further bring down the numbers. For the first time, road accident fatalities has seen a decline of 8 per cent during January-March 2020 as compared to the same period of 2019. Likewise, road accident fatalities declined by 27 per cent during January-June 2020 as compared to the same period last year. From April to June, there was a decline of 51 per cent; however, this was more due to the lockdown.
Patowary asked the health department to strengthen trauma care facilities, and asked the police and enforcement officials to conduct extensive drives against traffic violations especially overspeeding, drunken driving and underage driving. The road owning agencies � NHAI, NHIDCL and PWD � were also directed to install proper signages and take up all traffic calming measures, especially in the accident vulnerable areas and black spots.
Since the highest number of accidents have occurred on National Highways and in districts of Kamrup (Metro), Kamrup (Rural), Barpeta, Nagaon and Goalpara, the Transport Minister directed the respective DTOs to take all necessary road safety measures.
Meanwhile, the transport department has already started the process of filling up vacancies so that sufficient staff is available to ensure enforcement of motor vehicle laws and road safety in the State.
