Lessons to learn from safety report of Railways

The Indian railways high powered committee on rail safety has published its report. There are two recommendations in the report which also apply to process safety management in India. I am quoting from the report: "There is no practice of independent safety regulation by an independent agency separate from operations. The Railway Board has the unique distinction of being the rule maker, operator and the regulator, all wrapped into one. Commissioners of Railway Safety though considered to be the safety watchdogs have negligible role at the operational level. Compliance of safety standards set by Railways for themselves are often flouted for operational exigencies. The Committee has recommended a statutory Railway Safety Authority (RSA) and a safety architecture which is powerful enough to have a safety oversight on the operational mode of Indian Railways without detaching safety with the railway operations. The Committee has also recommended measures to strengthen the present Railway Safety Commission to undertake meaningful regulatory inspections" IR suffers from ‘IMPLEMENTATION BUG’. Implementation of accepted recommendations of the previous safety committees has been a major issue. The Committee has recommended an empowered group of officers in Railway Board to pilot the implementation of the recommendations in a time bound manner with full funding. The Committee has also recommended the review of implementation of recommendations by the new statutory outfit of Railway Safety Authority under Government of India. In India, we need to make PSM mandatory and bring an independant investigating authority like the CSB. Also, the recommendations of safety audits need to be followed up. Read the full report in this link.