Maha govt's road safety corpus is Rs 823 cr but actual spend just Rs 65 cr: data

The Maharashtra government has raised Rs 823 crore corpus since 2016 till FY 23end as Road Safety Fund but the actual spending on safety initiatives is just Rs 65 crore despite witnessing over 91000 deaths in road accidents during 201622 as per the dataAs per the official documents the RSF corpus has been mainly used for buying interceptor vehicles and some gadgets like breath analyzers and speed guns so farActing on the directives of the Supreme Courtappointed committee on Road Safety the state government announced to set up RSF to raise the corpus by levying a cess collected at the time of vehicle buying and a highpower committee for monitoring the fund in September 2016Maharashtra witnessed 91228 fatalities in 231906 road crashes between 2016 and 2022 Last year the state reported 14883 fatalities in road accidents including the tragic demise of former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry which exposed chinks on the safety frontThe sevenmember high power committee chaired by the chief secretary has approved Rs 82004 crore proposals from various departments but most projects are on paper now the data showsThe transport department blames the lack of spending of the RSF corpus on the coronavirus pandemicWe have to do various projects through it Fund especially automatic testing centres and automatic driving tracks Due to Covid the tendering process of it was stopped After Covid the tendering process was done but during the prebid there were some suggestions and objections about RFP because of which 46 months wasted Vivek Bhimanwar transport commissioner of Maharashtra said adding that the tenders have been floated nowThe state government has levied Road Safety Cess on vehicles registered from October 24 2016 The cess ranging between 05 per cent to 10 per cent of onetime or annual tax is collected only once in the lifetime of the vehicle and it varies depending on the type of vehicleAs per the official documents accessed by PTI in FY 202122 and FY 2223 the cess collected was Rs 13514 crore and Rs 17925 crore respectivelyAlso readMaharashtra reports 26 fresh cases of Covid19 infection zero deathsDuring FY 201617 the cess collected was just Rs Rs 4146 crore but from the next year the cess collection jumped to over Rs 100 crore barring FY 2021 when just Rs 9756 crore was collected as vehicles registration was hit due to the pandemicAfter setting up RSF the government opened a PLA account in which funds dont get lapsed at the end of a financial year on February 9 2017Thereafter Rs 3445 crore was deposited in the PLA account for carrying out various road safety works first time on January 30 2018Of the Rs 82004 crore projects approved by the high power committees the highest Rs 68851 crore proposals were submitted by the transport department followed by Rs 5906 crore by the Highway Police and Rs 40 crore by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation MSRDCAs per the documents so far RSF corpus is mainly used for buying interceptor vehicles some gadgets like breath analyzers bodywork cameras speed guns road safety awareness campaigns and a few other thingsThe highest amount of Rs 2923 crore has been spent on buying more than 150 interceptor vehicles fitted with gadgets like speed guns Lux meters and other gadgets for RTO offices Highway Police and Mumbai traffic police followed by over Rs 21 crore on various road safety campaignsA retired RTO official who did not wish to be named said that it seems a major chunk of the Road Safety Fund is being spent on buying interceptor vehicles providing gadgets and building infrastructure at RTO and police departments but nothing is done for capacity building activitiesParallelly the government should have also focused capacity building projects like research activities on road safety and training of officers he saidThe Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation MSRTC has spent Rs 1 crore for buying 347 Alcotest machines that are used for checking if crew members have consumed alcohol or not The transport department has spent around Rs 25 crore on buying 65 simulators two each for RTO officers and one each for deputy RTOsInterestingly as per the documents Maharashtra Highway Police spent Rs 136 crore only on printing 2018 road accident books while the Mumbai Traffic Police spent Rs 242 crore on 25 VMS boards An amount of Rs 5142 lakh was also given to the transport department for building a protective wall on a vacant plot of the Andheri RTO office in MumbaiThe purpose of the Road Safety Fund is to carry out various road safety activities Building a wall is not a road safety activity said an RTO official adding that such expenditures will defeat the very purpose of the fundThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the 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