Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot on Thursday met with officials of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and transport department and discussed ‘Standard Operating Procedure’ and other safety norms to reduce the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) when the services of Delhi Metro resume on September 7.
Following the meeting, he tweeted “Met with officials of @OfficialDMRC & @TransportDelhi to discuss SOP for graded reopening of Metro services. In anticipation to resuming Delhi's transport lifeline, with all precautions, it's the duty of both Govt & citizens to ensure safety by max. compliance to COVID protocols,”
Gahlot also inspected the control room and buses with recently installed CCTV surveillance cameras at Rajghat bus depot.
“The installation, which is being implemented by Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) is expected to be completed by November 2020. All DTC and cluster buses will simultaneously be fitted with 3 IP Cameras, MNVR integrated with GPS device, 10 panic buttons, 1 display for driver, hooter, strobe and 2 numbers of two way audio communication device one each for driver and conductor,” the government said in a statement.
Passenger, driver or conductor can press the panic button in case of any emergency or panic, it said, adding that the alert will automatically be sent to the Command & Control centre at Kashmiri Gate in real time.
“The operator at Command Centre will filter the alerts and forward the alert to respective stakeholders like police, fire and ambulance for quick response with GPS coordinates of the bus through SOPs defined in various alerts scenarios. SMS and email alerts will also be sent to the concerned authorities at the time of emergency in synchronization to these panic alerts,” it added.
During the inspection, the Transport Minister said “We are trying to bring our focus on petty and unnoticed crimes faced by women commuters in the buses. The presence of our bus marshals have already reduced crimes in buses. Now, with this initiative, we are confident that commuters in Delhi can confidently use public transport any time of the day,"
Delhi Government had announced earlier to upgrade the fleet of around 5,500 Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and cluster buses.
The objective of the project is to ensure safety and security of the passengers, particularly of women passengers through IP based CCTV surveillance cameras, panic button and GPS in the buses of DTC and cluster scheme.
Earlier in October 2019, Delhi Government launched a free travel scheme for women in all DTC and cluster buses allowing them to travel free of cost by using pink passes. The government had also deployed more than 11000 Marshals in all buses to ensure safe journey of the commuters especially women.