House panel flags lack of women safety, mobile phone networks on highways

A parliamentary panel on transport has pulled up the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways for not taking adequate steps to ensure the safety of women on highways. It said the government needs to work on installing proper signs, cell phone networks, street lights, highway patrolling at appropriate distances to improve women’s safety and crime monitoring on national highways and public transport.

The ministry blamed the states for their inability to come up with a proper plan to implement the schemes under the Nirbhaya framework. Nirbhaya Fund is a fund formed after the gang-rape-murder of a young medical student in Delhi in December 2012. This fund funds women protection schemes in ministries.

The Parliamentary Committee on Tourism and Transport, headed by BJP MP TG Venkatesh, has expressed concern over budget cuts for schemes related to women’s safety.

“The Committee is of the view that ensuring such measures are not budget intensive and feels that there is an urgent, pressing need to ensure that these basic measures are implemented throughout the NH section. The Committee strongly Recommends that the Ministry may conduct road safety audits throughout the stretch of NH and ensure proper signage, street lights and highway patrolling. This will not only help women traveling on the NH feel safe, especially at night, but will also boost the overall safety of road commuters. Helpline numbers should be displayed in the signage for various emergencies in English, Hindi and local languages,” said one of the committee’s recommendations.

The panel has pointed out that “no mobile network connectivity for extended stretches of NH is a serious cause of concern as it would mean problems in connecting to emergency services as well. While it is understood that cell towers is set up by telecom companies on the basis of the number of users in the area, the committee feels that given the high volume of traffic on national highways across the country, there should be a substantial demand from users for good internet connectivity in many such parts can.”

The committee said that it is concerned about the “extremely low expenditure made under road transport along with the scheme on women safety on public road transport”.

In response to this, the ministry said that no separate proposal has been received from the states for the public transport scheme under the Nirbhaya Framework. It said that the reason behind the huge reduction in allocation of ₹20 crore under the ‘Scheme on Women Safety on Public Road Transport’ in the allocation for 2022-23 was ₹100 crore as against the budget of 2021-22. allocation of .

Originally published at Pen 18