Thummala Nageswara Rao Chairs Meeting On Road Safety

Telangana Roads & Buildings Minister Thummala Nageswara Rao on Monday said that the department would conduct a study on the road safety measures in place in the state as a high priority and submit a report to the government for taking steps to prevent road accidents.

Rao chaired a Cabinet sub-committee meeting on the road safety issue at the Secretariat on Monday and discussed the measures to be taken to prevent road accidents, and the preparation of an action plan.

Expressing concern that over 7,000 accidents were taking place on the roads of Telangana on an average annually, the minister said that the government would take the necessary steps to bring down this number to zero.

The meeting discussed various issues including the immediate steps to be taken after accidents to prevent deaths and loss of assets, and the plans to be implemented to bring the accident rate down. It was also decided that a road safety authority would be set up by a committee. The committee would study the Road Safety Acts being implemented in various states of India and in other countries where accident rates were low, and have discussions with experts from the field. It would then submit a report to the state government.

According to the official data, 7,219 persons died in road accidents in Telangana in 2016. The numbers in 2015 and 2014 stood at 7,110 and 6,906 respectively.

Similarly, 22,811 road accidents took place in the state in 2016, and the numbers in 2015 and 2014 were 21,152 and 20,078 respectively.

The numbers clearly indicated that Telangana had registered a marked increase in the number of road accidents as well as deaths due to accidents over the past years. This called for an urgent need to take up measures to bring down the number of accidents, the minister said.

The minister informed those attending the meeting that the state government was spending a whopping Rs 18,000 crores for providing better road connectivity in Telangana.

IT Minister K T Rama Rao, Transport Minister P Mahender Reddy, Panchayat Raj Minister Jupally Krishna Rao, Housing Minister A Indrakaran Reddy and officials from the R&B department attended the meeting.