Central Railways (CR) and Western Railways (WR) today initiated an awareness drive to sensitise people on careful crossing of unmanned levels and have sent over 50 lakh mobile messages to the passengers in the accident-prone zones to mark the International Level Crossing Awareness Day tomorrow.
According to senior officials, Railways have started the awareness drive from June 1-5 to observe "Rail Passenger and Customer Facilitation Fortnight" in which a total of 1.10 crore messages were sent by WR and CR.
The Central Railways will send 60 lakh while Western Railways will be sending 50 lakh messages to passengers to raise awareness regarding carefully crossing unmanned level crossings to mark International Level Crossing Awareness Day on June 3.
"We did a study of unmanned level crossings falling in different districts of our zones which are accident prone and after profiling them, administration has started to sensitise people," Chief Public Relation Officer, WR, Sharat Chandrayan said.
He added that the administration has approached the state government and requested to include the issue of accidents occurring due at unmanned crossings in text books.
Under Western Railways - Bhavnagar, Rajkot, Ratlam, Nandurbar - and under CR - Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur - are districts which have most number of unmanned level crossings that are accident prone.
Chief PRO of Central Railways Narendra Patil said CR has always used technology to educate commuters and they have in the recent past launched drive against rooftop travelling, cleanliness etc.
Patil said that the job of sending SMSes has been assigned to the agency empanelled by DAVP, who have database of mobile numbers in affected areas.
There were 30,348 railway level crossings in the country by end 2014, of which 18,785 are manned and 11,563 unmanned.
Whereas, in Central Railways, there are 932 manned and 62 UMLC.
According to railway data, in 2011-12, accidents at level crossings claimed 208 lives, while in 2012-13 it was 124 and 95 in 2013-14.
