Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma asked transport minister Parimal Suklabaidya to hold a meeting with PWD and the transport department to ensure necessary safety norms are introduced in accident-prone areas to bring down the incidences of road accidents.
Taking a review of the transport department with the district transport officers in Guwahati on August 2, chief minister Sarma asked the transport minister to hold a meeting with the departments to assess and analyse the road accidents in the accident-prone areas and suggest measures to introduce more safety norms to save precious lives.
Moreover, taking into consideration the number of accident-related fatalities, Sarma observed that the districts which recorded more than 100 fatalities caused by road accidents in the last year, the deputy commissioners of the concerned districts should convene a meeting with all the stakeholders and find out ways to cut down the accidents.
A letter to that effect will also be sent from the chief minister to the respective DCs.
Moreover, since most of the road-related fatalities are caused for not wearing helmets or not using seat belts, the transport department and police would jointly undertake a massive fortnight campaign before the upcoming Durga Puja to generate awareness among the people to adhere to safety rules and save lives in Assam.
More contactless services
For the convenience of the public in general, CM Sarma asked the transport department to bring more services under the category of ‘contactless services’.
At present 40 services of the transport department are there under contactless services. The chief minister asked the department to include five more services under the category.
From August 15 onwards all the services in the transport department will be online as manual services will be offered only to those customers whose bio-metric identities are withheld by law.
Held a meeting with District Transport Officers today. Reviewed the status of activities targetted towards revenue generation as well as the measures to make contact less services readily available for public.
Also reviewed road safety measures being put to use by Transport dept pic.twitter.com/60Vdlv0RpV
— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) August 2, 2022
During the meeting, chief minister Sarma also asked the DTOs to ensure that before the expiry of the vehicle fitness certificate, the customers receive mobile messages. Similarly, before 30 days of the expiry of the validity of learners’ licences, the customers should also get mobile messages.
All DTOs should convene a meeting with all the transporters to ensure that all vehicles plying in the state be registered in Assam within one year even if they are registered outside.
The chief minister also asked the transport department to intensify fines from overloading vehicles. He asked the department to have talks with the finance department to facilitate use of digital payment gateways like ‘paytm’ to realise fines from the defaulters.
New posts in the transport department
Since digital know-how is becoming very important for conveniently delivery of services to the customers, Sarma asked the transport department to take steps for the creation of new posts in the department to take contactless services of the department to a new level. Himanta Biswa Sarma congratulated the department to increase its revenue generation through its different services and asked it to sustain it to achieve the revenue target for the current year.
Transport minister Parimal Suklabaidya, principal secretary to the chief minister Samir Kumar Sinha, commissioner and secretary to transport department Adil Khan and other senior officers of government were part of the meeting.
