East Coast Railway orders large scale safety audit

The East Coast Railway (ECoR) Sunday ordered a large scale safety audit for all level crossings in its jurisdiction, an official said. The move came a day after the ECoR authorities suspended two of its staff for failing to close a level crossing gate while an express train was passing near Puri.

Though a detailed inquiry report is pending, ECoR General Manager PS Mishra called for complete check in the system to avoid any such case in future. There are 828 level crossings in East Coast Railway, out of which Odisha has 559. There are 224 level crossings in Andhra Pradesh and 45 in Chhattisgarh.

As per the move, each level crossing will be audited. All the safety aspects starting from boom barriers to the approach road and the siren to the warning boards will be checked properly. All the staff and officers were asked to identify weaknesses in the system and bring it to the fore to put its safety mechanism in the right place.

"Unless we admit that there are deficiencies, we cannot expect the deficiencies to be removed," Mishra said asking senior officials to interact with junior colleagues to know more about problems on the field. He called for a large-scale audit of the entire level crossings network in the ECoR system.

The level crossing drawings will also be matched with the actual ground position to rule out any inconsistencies. The Loco Pilots will also be tested for awareness of rules related to level crossings. Though the incident at Puri was attributable to human error, there could be some systemic flaw also which needs to be identified rooted out, Mishra said.

The level crossing gate near Matiapada in Puri district was left open at around 7.25 am on Saturday when Puri-Haita Tapaswini Express chugged through the stretch.