New Delhi: A Geneva-based global road safety body yesterday welcomed the Indian government’s move allowing its MPs to spend their local area development fund for works related to constructing roads, pavements and cycle tracks.
In a circular issued to over half a dozen ministries, including urban development and railways, the statistics and programme implementation ministry has included 31 new works which MPs can take up using their fund for creating “durable community assets”.
Some of these are construction of approach roads to railway stations and platforms, cattle crossings and provision for drinking water. “IRF (International Road Federation), had been demanding this for long as bringing more works under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) will help improve fund availability for road safety-related projects, which need less budget but can save innocent lives,” said K K Kapila, IRF chairman.
According to the latest accident data from lat year, 473,000 traffic accidents were reported across the country. While over 440,000 of these were road crashes, 1,762 were railroad accidents.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data shows that 139,000 people died in road crashes while in rail-road crashes, 1,808 people lost their lives. Unmanned railway crossings are often the main reason for rail-road accidents.
MPLADS fund can also be utilised for providing playfields and sports facilities at village and block-levels, laying of synthetic hockey and football turfs of permanent nature in keeping with international standards, under-bridges at railway crossings, foot overbridges over railway tracks, road diversions, footpaths and pedestrian ways and cycle tracks. All these activities are aimed at reducing accidents and fatalities.
“With the aim to make roads safe for pedestrians and cyclists, the development fund can also be used for construction of pedestrian ways, segregated lanes for non-motorised vehicles and rain water harvesting projects,” said Kapila. IANS
