NATRIP would open a new vista in safe hill driving in Northeast

NATRIP to open new vista in safe hill driving

SILCHAR, Jan 16: The hill driving training centre, which was opened here as a part of the National Automative Testing and R&D Infrastructure Project (NATRIP), inaugurated today by Vilas Rao Deshmukh, Union Minister of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprices, at Dholchora near here would open a new vista in safe hill driving in Northeast. It marks a much needed initiative in road safety, the focus of this centre being on training commercial vehicle drivers for safe driving in the hilly terrain, thus ensuring road safety.

The model inspection and maintenance centre being developed at Jaffirbund, close to this town, will be India’s one of the most demonstrative facilities of its kind to be emulated and replicated across various States.

NATRIP, the unique tie up between Government of India, number of State Governments and the Automative Industry is establishing state of the art testing, validation and resource and development infrastructure in the country across seven locations of Manesar, Indore, Chennai, Arai Pune, Ahmadnagar and Rae Bareilly, besides Silchar.

The facilities to be provided at the training centre includes hill road training track and driving simulators while the coming up maintenance centre will have mechanics training institute, two vehicles inspection lanes, a multipurpose track of wet and dry conditions and curves of different radius.

With NATRIP, a good number of trained drivers and service engineers will come out and all the vehicles in Northeast will have to obtain fitness certificates from it. The mobile laboratory here will conduct test of vehicles at select places. All the essential tools and equipments for testing will also be available here.

Highly sophisticated machines can certify the fitness or otherwise of a vehicle in 30 seconds and fitness certificates of this training centre will be compulsory which will greatly reduce road accidents, so frequent nowadays. The centre will also act as a nodal point for vehicle accident data analysis. It is also expected to reduce the level of pollution. In fact, a specialized hill area driving training centre and an in-use vehicle management centre in the Northeastern region at Silchar will be a matter of pride.

The centre will create direct and indirect employment opportunities in the region. Specialized training in hill track driving will also create avenues of employment in defence, paramilitary forces, SPG, Special Action Army, BRTF, SSB and BSF. Openings also exist for the trained drivers for commercial vehicles, ambulance, fire brigade as well as VVIP vehicles.

With the launch of NATRIP, the country as a whole is set to provide a major fillip to its fast growing automative industry and harness the country’s major strengths in the field of automotive engineering, IT and electronics. The infrastructure under NATRIP will offer wide spectrum of services for project development and validation. This profile of NATRIP is based on the interview with Pabitra Bhushan Deb, officer on special duty, NATRIP. THE SENTINEL