Safety audit report of 280 FOB's and ROB's under Central Railway still awaited

Every year the Central Railway gets all the FOB's and ROB's passing over its tracks an audit for safety prior to monsoons and after the monsoon ends. This year too, the CR has has commissioned an audit of the same with the IIT Bombay, the report of which is still awaited, according to the information provided by the CR to RTI Activist Anil Galgali. The CR has incurred an expense of Rs 3.37 crores for the safety audit.

RTI Activist Anil Galgali had sought information about the safety audit of all the FOB's and ROB's on its route and in Mumbai division. The Bridges department of the Central Railway, informed Galgali that, the work of safety audit of all the FOB's and ROB's is not given to baby external agencies. The Safety audit and work on other informations is conducted by different engineer's as per the responsibilty delegated on them every year, prior to monsoons as well as after the monsoon ends. In the period of August 2018 to March 2019, 191 FOB's and 89 ROB's safety audit was done by IIT Bombay, the report of which is still awaited. The expense of Rs 3 crore 37 lakhs 800 has been fixed and an advance of 50% amounting to Rs 1 crore 68 lakhs 50 thousand 400 has been paid, the report has still not been made available to the CR.

In a statement, Anil Galgali has expressed that, since the FOB's and ROB's are 280, the IIT Bombay should do the safety audit and phase wise issue it's report. He said that looking at the safety of the commuters, the audit though conducted and and expense is incurred, in the absence of the report no remedy can be taken up. In a letter addressed to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, Galgali has demanded that the safety audit report should be made available online for the general public.