Road safety fund to be a reality soon
The chief secretary will head the empowered committee to be constituted to oversee the utilisation of the proposed road safetyfund.
“As per the earlier proposal, the principal secretary, Home, was to head the multi-member empowered committee but now it has been proposed that the chief secretary will head this committee to make it a more serious business,” a senior official told the HT.
The representatives of the insurance companies, the principal secretaries of various government departments like home, transport, health, education, PWD and the like, will comprise the high powered committee.
The road safety fund, proposed immediately after the Akhilesh Yadav government came to power a year and a half ago, is all set to be a reality soon. The proposal, according to sources, has been approved by the accountant general, as well as the law department.
“Now the proposal, along with the rules to govern its spending, will soon be put to the cabinet for its nod and the fund will be operational after the cabinet approval,” sources said.
As per the proposal, a certain percentage of the money that the transport department and the home department realise by way of compounding of offences will flow into the road safety fund via the treasury.
The fund will be used for a series of things like launching road safetyawareness campaigns, purchasing ambulances and cranes, doing engineering work by removing causes of accidents at the identified places (black spots) and the like.
The high-powered committee will sanction the use of the money and regularly monitor its utilisation while the districtlevel committees to be headed by the district magistrates will be authorised to use the fund for the local purpose.
“The road safety fund will basically be used to fill the critical gaps between the measures needed to be taken to check the road accidents and rescue people when they meet with an accident and thefunds needed to take such measures,” explained sources.
It, is however, yet to decided as to what percentage of the total compounding money collected by the transport and the home departments be contributed to the road safety fund. According to sources, the government is mulling fixing it at 50%.
The transport department, for example, collects around Rs 100 core revenue as compounding fee that the violators of the Motor Vehicles rules pay to escape being punished.
The idea of setting up the road safety fund in UP is inspired by the successful operationalisation of a similar fund in Tamil Nadu. “Setting up of the road safety fund will go a long way in controlling accidents in UP which leads other states in the number of road mishap-related deaths,” claimed sources.