Safety is priority of the Indian Railways; there is no limit to the rail safety fund: Piyush Goyal
The government will “very soon” float a global tender to procure tracks for modernising the railways, which can create a million jobs within a year through various areas across its ecosystem, Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday
He further said that safety will be priority for the railways and there would be no limit to funding it.
The comments of the new railways minister come after a spate of rail accidents in the last few month leading to loss of lives.
“I have diverted all available tracks to track renewal so that we can make the existing tracks safer. We are looking to go in for global procurement of rail tracks…this will help fast track the doubling of lines and new projects,” he told reporters at the India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Asked by when the global tender for tracks modernisation would be floated, Goyal said “very soon, it’s under process”.
“There is no limit to safety expenditure. Safety will be the priority of Indian railways. I have also categorised pedestrian foot-over bridges, platforms, entry and exit points as safety items.
“I have turned around 100 year old tradition which used to consider all of this as amenities,” he said.
He …read more