SK Sharma, principal secretary (transport), said the platform is basically a working group on road safety for the state.
For too long, authorities and departments worked separately in their own capacity to address the issue of road safety. What was missing from the picture was a common platform would get each agency concerned - the highway police, the traffic police, the transport department and the public works department - to co-ordinate on the solutions they had to offer.
The state government woke up to this need when it created such a platform for the first time a couple of months ago to look into problems every month or two.
SK Sharma, principal secretary (transport), said the platform is basically a working group on road safety for the state. Unlike other government-appointed committees or study groups, it has no fixed term or a deadline to present recommendations. “It is essentially a consultative process, which will be continuous. The working group will periodically give recommendations to the state road safety council, which is a policy-making body for road safety in the state and is presided over by the chief minister himself,” said Sharma.
Vijay Kamble, additional director general (highways), said the group has already met once and its brief centres on policy matters for “micro-management of road safety issues” and looks into specific problems every month or two. “It is a platform (for various agencies of the state concerned with the issue) to discuss cohesively problems related to maintaining road safety and to recommend solutions. Such a platform never existed before,” he said.
Sharma said the recommendations made by this working group will be considered seriously and implemented. Suggestions submitted last year to the union ministry of road transport and highways by the four working groups formed by the National Road Safety Council, will be taken up separately. “We will look into each suggestion clearly at the time of consultations.”
The working group has additional director-general (highways), joint commissioner of police (traffic), state transport commissioner, managing director, Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation and secretary, public works department, as members.
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