In a bid to reduce road accidents in the country as well as to improve road safety, the Modi government eyes to join hands with private players. Recently, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has said public-private collaboration along with continuous efforts will help in improving road safety and reducing road accidents in India. While addressing a webinar on private financing for road safety, the Minister for Road Transport and Highways called upon the private sector to contribute in creating social awareness, social consciousness, as well as social responsibility towards road safety. Besides, Gadkari also urged them to utilize their CSR (corporate social responsibility) fund to address all concerns of road safety in the country.
The Union Minister further reiterated commitment to achieve 50 per cent of reduction of road accident deaths by the year 2025 as well as zero accident-related fatalities in India by the year 2030. According to Gadkari, road accidents put social economic burden on society and the country as a whole. He requested all entities of the private sector to proactively come forward for the development of social bonds. The Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways said the corpus generated with social contribution would be effectively utilized to finance projects like zero fatality as well as other road safety strategies on a national scale.
Meanwhile, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, Gadkari has informed that to make tolling efficient as well as to ensure seamless traffic movement, ETC system using passive RFID technology has been implemented on a Pan India basis. In order to promote the payment of fee through digital mode as well as to provide for seamless passage through toll plazas, the Modi government has declared all lanes of toll plazas on NHs as “FASTag lane of the fee plaza” with effect from midnight of 15/16 February 2021. After the announcement of all lanes on National Highways as FASTag lanes, the overall FASTag penetration has reached around 96 per cent, the ministry said.