Cuttack: Amid alarming rise in road mishaps in the state, lack of proper enforcement of a directive issued by the Centre for installation of speed governors in vehicles has drawn flak from several quarters.
In 2015, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) had issued a notification making speed governors mandatory for vehicles. Later, the ministry had extended the deadline for installation of the device till February 2017.
It is a pity that the state Transport Department is yet to take any concrete step to comply with the MoRTH’s direction even as a month has elapsed after the deadline, some intellectuals rued.
Transport Department statistics reveals that out of 16,000 buses registered under different Regional Transport Offices (RTOs), only 2,000 have been equipped with speed limiting devices (SLDs). The department, however, is clueless about the number of trucks equipped with SLDs even as there are about 60,000 trucks plying on state’s roads.
Meanwhile, some of the vehicle owners refused to install SLDs in the vehicles citing technical glitches. “We have faced technical problems after installing the devices. On top of it, whenever we contact the device manufacturers for assistance, they remain unreachable,” they said adding they had also approached the transport commissioner in this regard.
Transport department officials, however, attributed the delay in complying with the order to non-availability of SLDs in open market.
Insofar as Cuttack RTO is concerned the progress in this regard is very poor with hardly eight or 10 buses out of 500 being equipped with the devices so far. The RTO has no data about the number of trucks equipped with speed governors even though 3,500 trucks ply under it.
Transport commissioner DS Kutey said the vehicle owners are facing problems in installation of SLDs owing to scarcity of devices in market.
“We have written to the device manufacturing company to supply adequate number of speed governors.” All the vehicles would be equipped with speed governors by June end, he added.
Hinting at demand-supply mismatch, Transport Minister Ramesh Chandra Majhi said, “We have planned to open more installation centres across the state to facilitate easy and convenient installation of the
devices.”
Speeding commercial vehicles is stated to be one of the major factors behind road mishaps and it causes about 40-50 per cent of casualties.
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