Railway Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday said that negotiations are on with the telecom ministry for the equity participation of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited in RailTel Corporation to improve the Railways' telecom services.

Inaugurating a two-day seminar on 'Emerging technologies in safety and customer satisfaction' in New Delhi, Kumar said he had met with Communications and IT Minister Arun Shourie in this regard and negotiations were on.

Kumar said safety received topmost priority in Railways and since November, 2001, the Rs 17,000 crore (Rs 170 billion) Special Railway Safety Fund was being effectively utilised for upgradation, renewal of railway assets -- including tracks, repair of bridges and improving signalling and telecom facilities.

He said the optical fibre cable linking Bangalore-Secunderabad-Chennai by RailTel India Limited would be commissioned later this month.

Engine drivers to be redesignated 'loco pilots'

The Railway minister said that engine drivers and assistant drivers would now be re-designated as 'loco pilots' and 'assistant loco pilots' to 'boost their morale.'

Anti-collision devices from this year

Anti-collision devices will be introduced from the current financial year, Kumar said. Trials on providing Internet on a moving train, the first time in the world, had been successful and would be introduced shortly, he added.

He also called upon the officials to speed up safety related programmes on trains and provide customer satisfaction as the year has been named as Customer Satisfaction Year.

Stating that more than two-third accidents were due to human error, he said several measures were afoot to tackle the problem.

Earlier, RailTel Managing Director A K Chopra and Railway Board Chairman I M S Rana talked of the challenges facing the Indian Railways in the field of signalling and telecom and how railway officials were tackling them.