Chief Secretary Sukhdev Singh on Wednesday stressed on the importance of protecting human lives and at the same time said that priority should be given in following traffic rules. The Chief Secretary was speaking at the National Seminar on Road Safety organized by the Department of Transport on Wednesday. Singh stressed on the needs of following traffic rules strictly and if requires fear should be created on minds of people for disobeying traffic rules.
The Chief Secretary directed all departments related to traffic safety to form an SOP (Special Operating Procedure), emphasizing on working with coordination. He asked to constitute a small group of people from all the concerned departments to implement traffic safety related works in a time bound manner.
This group will formulate a strategy for implementation of works and will ensure that it is fully implemented. He said that accidents have increased even after the roads have been marked with black spots. There is a serious need to do homework on how to stop it.
The Chief Secretary said that when he was coming to the office from home in the morning, he noticed that every two-wheeler driver was wearing a helmet. He congratulated the officials of the concerned department for changing the habit of wearing helmets. He said that the state is still not getting the helmet compulsorily; the seat belts are not fully installed. At the same time, violation of high speed, dangerous driving and other traffic rules is also going on. Cases of road accidents cannot be stopped without following the traffic rules completely.
The CS, on the occasion, also urged people in helping person injured in road accident. He said people who are apprehensive about taking road accident victims to hospital for fear of police harassment in Jharkhand need not be hesitant anymore. Singh said that the Jharkhand cabinet has approved Good Samaritan policy that will not only protect helpful citizens from police harassment but will also reward them.
As per the policy if two persons hospitalize any road accident victims, they will get RS 2000 as incentive. Similarly, an amount of Rs 5000 would be given if more than two persons help in the hospitalization so that the amount could be equally distributed among them.
Earlier, road construction secretary Sunil Kumar shared his views on better road maintenance so as to curb the accidents on road. Sunil Kumar talked about construction and proper maintenance of roads, making danger free sharp turns, identification of black spots among others. Also speaking on the occasion the health secretary talked about hospitalization of road accident victims within the golden hour (the first hour after an accident takes place). He said that to save road accident victims construction of a trauma centre at 50 km distance on highway is being considered.