The ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) has decided to open a control room for monitoring the problems arising due to heavy downpours on highways during the upcoming rainy season.
In the whole process, the regional officers are to play a crucial role in gathering the inputs and taking relevant actions.
The ministry in an office memorandum, dated 22 June, has decided to open the control room with immediate effect. The control room would monitor the situations of disruption of traffic, accidents due to poor visibility and potholes, water logging, road obstruction, landslides and so on. According to the memo, the regional officers of MoRTH, the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited and the National Highways Authority of India or NHAI would have to submit a report to the MoRTH control room mentioning issues related to the operation of National Highways triggered by heavy downpours.
The ministry has also defined the role of the officers deployed at the control room. As per MoRTH, the control room officers would receive calls from public and the government agencies and inform the concerned NH agency to take appropriate actions immediately. The officers have also been assigned the duty of informing the concerned regional officers about disruption of National Highways for addressing the issue. The control room would also maintain a register of the caller, location, issues raised and so on. The officer-in-charge of the control room would also prepare a daily report from the regional officers and contact those whose reports would remain pending till the end of the day.