|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 27 June 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Sri Lanka Railways on a deadly track by Kaminie Jayanthi Liyanage
Train disasters occuring too frequently in Sri Lanka Railways have placed passenger safety in jeopardy. Last year and the months following, derailments, accidents, breakdowns and suspensions of train services have been reported, unfortunately, all too often. Certainly, one cannot ignore 255 derailments and 585 locomotive failures in 2003, and 104 derailments and 620 locomotive failures in the year before, and the resultant toll of lives as "hazards in the normal course of rail business." An examination of the media reports of the past years bring to light numerous train accidents, with some of them found to have resulted from excessive speeding and even, removal of rails by persons attempting sabotage. Ms. Gamage who hops a regular train ride from Ambalangoda to her office in Fort every morning says that the Samudra Devi has been her choice of public conveyance, as is the case of a host of other office workers. Trains have been the cheapest mode of mass conveyance in the country since industrialisation. Apart from the fear of accidents and being petrified once when she took a ride up country in an excessively speeding train ("we were thrown from one side to the other"), Ms. Gamage's other railway grievances are that the office trains are either late, eroding on her attendance and pay; or they are under capacitated to seat, or even offer relatively comfortable standing space, to the vast working crowds which gets in daily. "Our train has 18 carriages yet there is not even breathable space to stand," she complains. "Passengers travel even in toilets, so one cannot use the toilet in an emergency. Railway shuttling of working masses to and from the capital city needs either more trains or more compartments." Passengers travelling on footboard in the crowded trains have been known to have been pushed out of speeding trains and losing their lives, either crushed between the platform and the carriages, or being run over. Lilamani who rides the office train from Wadduwa to Fort, speaks of the lack of security surveillance. "As we come very early in the morning, sometimes we are fodder to chain-snatchers frequenting the train in these dark early hours. In the women's carriage alone, several chains have been snatched in the past." She also remembers receiving a bad knock on her head when the engine of the train which she was travelling, hurtled on and disconnected from its carriages, racing on for more than a few yards before the unlinking was noticed by the passengers and the driver himself. "More security, please!" says a wishful Ms. Gamage. "There are times when certain people along the railway line choses to throw stones into the compartments. I can remember a pregnant woman being hit on the forehead and she had to be taken to the Nagoda hospital." More serious are the past media reports of railway guards speaking of the lack of knowledge in some of the train drivers on the vaccum brake functioning while speeding excessively down inclines. "If at 40 mph, the vaccum brake cannot stop the train, at 80 mph, how can they stop the train?" The Departmental Working Instructions on "Safety Rules" restrict running trains over 20 mph on incline tracks. Is there sufficient knowledge of the mechanisms of exercising control in order to avert disasters before they happen? Countering the comparatively minor disasters of chain snatching and footboard hazards, the Station Superintendent of Fort Railway Station says that an effective security system exists at the entry gates to the station, while the risk of prowlers entering the train compartments at stations, in areas habitually frequented by people with such tendencies is difficult to avoid. "Have you ever seen people travelling on footboard in rainy days?," he asks, indicating that people wilfully travel on footboard on sunny days, when in actuality, no passenger is expected to do so according to railway safety rules and regulations. Such rules also decree that railway tracks are not supposed to have any pedestrians, but have you ever seen people obeying this rule? Answering the major safety issue of derailment and accidents due to speeds, Priyal de Silva, General Manager, Sri Lanka Railways, speaks of three root causes which have been singled out. They are the long-time non-allocation of treasury funds for rail resources such as carriages, locomotives, sleepers and tracks; lack of vigilance in railway personnel; and operation problems due to the drivers, loco-foremans and guards not adhering fully to the rules, regulations and check lists for checking locomotives and carriages, routinally imperative before starting a train journey and ending it. According to him, while the train services transport an approximate 325,000 persons travelling to and from Colombo daily, with about 125,000 of this number being workers, there has been a backlog of 840,000 sleepers during the last 10-30 years. "About 270,000 of these are so bad that we have to impose speed restrictions on them. For the last number of years, we have been running the same locomotives on the same sleepers. There is about 180 miles of rail track on which we have had to impose speed restrictions. On new sleepers, such restrictions are not necessary." As the railway officials explain, railway time tables are drawn according to the speed restrictions exercised at different stretches of railway tracks, and improving speed means importing sleepers and other components needed for tracks which cannot be purchased due to the lack of funds. "Sixty per cent of the state labour important for the country's economy uses the railway. When trains are late, the red line is struck and their jobs are at peril. The government workshop at Ratmalana used to construct about 30 carriages a month but now this number is much reduced due to lack of material." From the Railway's annual earnings of about Rs. 1,400 M, diesel alone is purported to cost an annual sum of Rs. 1,200 M. "When the rail tracks are bad, the track has to be attended to after every train goes," says De Silva. "But, people are not so vigilant as to do this. We also have a 25 per cent shortage of plate layers (those working on the tracks). Where the checklists for locomotives are concerned, some drivers do not adhere 100 per cent to the required regulations before he starts the train journey. The recent derailments at Trincomalee, Gampaha and Kantale happened because the drivers did not fully adhere to the rules." Drainage emptied on the rail tracks by tenement dwellers, settled on either side of track areas, specially in the coastal region, is another cause, he says. "This is beyond our control. But people attitudes and political interference too affect the passenger safety. When B.D. Rampala was the General Manager, railway was the safest mode of passenger travel because he had sufficient funds to rectify deficiencies." Apart from the bulk traffic of passenger travel, moves are in the offing to increase the Sri Lanka Railway's goods transportation arm on a commercial basis, generating better income for services. "The railway used to be a major transporter of oil, tea, flour and even dhal and onions at one time." Affirming that proposals on improving railway policy have been submitted to the Transport Minister, De Silva points out, "This is transportation with minimal pollution, leaving roads free of traffic congestions." |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
