New directives for ensuring safer CNG buses in Delhi

New Delhi, Feb 4: The Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority issued a new set of directives here today to ensure implementation of CNG bus safety regulations in the national capital.

These directives were targeted at the Delhi Government, the bus manufacturers and bus operators. EPCA's action came in the wake of an incident of fire aboard a CNG school bus in the capital on January 27.

EPCA, the pollution monitoring arm of the Supreme Court, had been monitoring the implementation of CNG bus safety regulations in the city over the last few years. From time to time, it issued appropriate directions to improve safety-related engineering parameters and components in CNG buses, inspection and maintenance of CNG buses, enforcement of safety rules and regulations and also the specifications of CNG fuel quality.

While a number of these directives had been implemented, and considerable progress had been made in building the infrastructure for safety inspection in the city, some serious lapses still remained.

''We are deeply disturbed as safety regulations are not being fully enforced,'' EPCA Chairperson Bhure Lal said today.

Following the incident, EPCA constituted a team of experts to investigate it; the committee had carefully examined the burnt bus, its documents and the circumstances leading to the accident and submitted its findings to the authority. It was clear that the 13-year-old converted bus did not go for its requisite quarterly inspections for over seven months.

To prevent any such untoward incident in future, the authority had released a set of directives which, it said, ''must be enforced with zero tolerance for lapses.'' The first directive was to introduce mobile facility for safety inspection. The Department of Transport of the Delhi government should set up a mobile facility for safety inspection to check gas leakage and other safety-related parameters for random on-road surprise inspection by February 7. EPCA would do a monthly review.

It sought making quarterly safety inspection mandatory. In addition to the annual fitness and third party inspection that all buses had to undergo currently, the transport department would institute a system of quarterly safety inspections. For this, 20 safety inspection centres had been created, five in DTC depots and 15 in the workshops of two bus manufacturers --the Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland.

EPCA said the transport department must issue notices stating that certificates of quarterly inspections obtained from these centres would be mandatory for getting annual fitness certificates and permits. All bus operators must register for quarterly inspection with inspection centres within 15 days to enable tracking of the inspection status of the buses in future. The transport department would maintain a complete list of the registrations. The department should take action against bus operators -- even impound their buses -- if they did not appear for the quarterly inspections within the due date, it said.

Each bus owner would have to maintain a logbook with the details of periodic testing and repairs, it added.

In order to improve safety inspection facilities and testing, it ordered that all buses must be inspected according to the officially approved check-list for safety tests. The transport department must inspect and ensure that the test facilities and test procedures in all authorised workshops were as per the specifications detailed out by EPCA-led expert committee on CNG safety.

All authorised workshops of the DTC, the bus manufacturers as well as the transport department (for its mobile facility) must immediately obtain automatic leak detectors and voltage testing meters, it directed.

EPCA told bus manufacturers to act on re-routing of wire harness in the remaining Tata buses -- including converted buses -- within one month to avoid safety related accidents. The transport department should ensure compliance in this regard.

Vehicle manufacturers had already offered special packages to rectify problems of gas leakage at reasonable costs. All buses must avail of this package. The transport department must ensure this was implemented, it said.

It aksed for preparing schedule for phasing out of old buses. The transport department must submit to EPCA a list of the buses that were due for phase-out.

It also called for follow up action. EPCA was setting up a committee under the chairmanship of Dr H B Mathur, vehicle technology expert, to oversee compliance and auditing and report to the authority on its findings.

The CNG bus programme in Delhi was among the largest in the world; it had helped lower the peak air pollution levels of the '90s and had stabilised the problem. Globally, CNG vehicles were considered safe and clean, it said.

Lack of proper implementation of the safety regulations must not be allowed to compromise the quality of the programme, which had enormous potential to clean up the air and protect public health in the city, it added.

UNI