Nitin Gadkari calls for public-private collaboration to reduce road accidents

Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has said that public private collaboration and continuous efforts will help in reducing road accidents in the country and improve road safety.

Addressing a webinar on "Private Financing for Road Safety" he called upon the private sector to contribute in creating social consciousness, social awareness and social responsibility towards road safety and utilize their corporate social responsibility CSR fund to address all concerns of road safety.

Gadkari reiterated commitment to achieve 50 per cent of reduction of road deaths by 2025 and zero accident-related fatalities in the country by 2030, informed an official ministry release. The Minister said road accidents put the social-economic burden on society and the nation as a whole and urged all private sector entities to proactively come forward for the development of social bonds.

He said the corpus generated with social contribution would be effectively used to finance projects such as zero fatality and other road safety strategies on a national scale. On June 17 this year, Gadkari had said that the Government's target is to reduce road accident deaths by 50 per cent by the year 2024.

The Minister had said that his Ministry is striving hard to reduce the road accident deaths by restructuring and strengthening four 'E' of road safety, that are, Engineering (including road and automobile engineering), Economy, Enforcement and Education.

He had suggested that the corporate world should carry out independent surveys to identify the reasons behind the accidents and a report may be submitted to the Ministry. The Minister pointed out that 50 per cent of the road accidents are due to road engineering problems and now the government has taken special initiatives to improve the black spot. This will greatly contribute towards the vision of 'zero road accident' in India.