Rattled by the spate of accidents, the railways have decided to hold General Managers and Divisional Railway Managers accountable for any serious accidents.
It has also decided to ask the ministry of civil aviation to publish the reports of the Commissioner of Railway Safety, under whom the CRS functions.
Railway minister Nitish Kumar told reporters after a meeting of the general managers of different zonal railways on safety issues that this will be accompanied by delegation of larger financial powers to them to take up safety related works.
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He said the GMs can now spend upto Rs 10 crore on such works instead of having to depend on prior sanction from the railway board.
He also said that there were no proposal for reducing the speeds of freight or passenger trains.
Kumar said the railways will also expedite filling up the vacancies in the safety category especially in the lower levels like pointsmen, gangmen and others who are actualy reponsible for plotting the course of a train, besides giving the safety organisation powers on the lines of the vigilance department.
He said this would ensure that comments made by the safety organisation would be taken more seriously by the staff.
The safety organisation monitors the safety performance of the various departments at the board, zones and divisional levels. It was set up in 1962.
The minister said that to ensure that all posts in the safety organisation were filled up, it has also been decided to open for recruitment, the post of Chief Safety Officer to all disciplines of the railway staff except security and personnel staff.
He said the department would ask the civil aviation ministry to make public the reports of the CRS for greater understanding of the way such reports are made.