NEW DELHI: Indian Railways will hire close to 200,000 workers over the next few years in a recruitment drive aimed at strengthening its safety and ground patrolling divisions.The world’s fourth-largest rail network ferries millions of passengers every day, but doesn’t have a good safety record. In the last three years, at least 650 people have died in train accidents.Last week, a train derailed in Uttar Pradesh, killing at least 21 people. At present, almost 16 per cent of the safety posts in the railways, mostly at lower levels, are lying vacant, making patrolling and maintenance of its 64,000-km-long network of tracks difficult.“The national transporter will invest Rs 15,000 crore in the current fiscal to fix the snags on its network. This amount is separate from the money spent on modernisation. This will purely be spent on track renewal,” a top rail official said.“There have been around 115 train accidents on an average every year in the last three years,” he added. The official said most of the hiring in the coming days will be to fill the posts in the safety and maintenance category. Also, gangmen, who patrol and fix tracks, would be trained as per international standards. Railways is also planning to procure more than 100 track inspection vehicles.A pilot run of the sensor technology that highlights any cracks in tracks would also be done, the official said. “A fund namely ‘Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh’ (RRSK) has been created for financing critical safety related works,” the official said.Railways has also decided to stop the production of ICF coaches, which are deemed unsafe. These coaches don’t have anti-climbing and anti-capsizing features, which causes an increase in the number of causalities.“Existing stock of 40,000 ICF coaches (90 per cent of total coaches) cannot be discarded and, hence, is being retrofitted to add anti-climbing feature. All new coaches that are being manufactured are the safer LHB coaches with German design,” the official said.“New technologies like condition based monitoring system for rolling stock and track and ultrasonic broken rail detection system will be piloted on the network,” he said.The move makes ample sense, but we must do more. Railways needs to better leverage technology for safety on the tracks. Hot Axle and Box Detection (HABD) systems are used world over for detecting the possibility of rail derailment in real time. Such systems need to be widely diffused in the Railways, along with IT-based platforms for monitoring online. Also needed is regular ultrasonic track fracture detection. A nationwide safety audit of the Railways brooks no delay.