NEW DELHI: India's railway minister said Wednesday he aimed to reduce deaths to zero on the nation's accident-plagued rail lines as he announced the annual budget for the crumbling network.
The train system has a notoriously bad accident record, with a recent official report revealing almost 15,000 people are killed every year crossing rail tracks -- a figure that the government described as a "massacre".
"I vow to target zero deaths," Dinesh Trivedi told parliament. "My focus will be safety, safety, safety."
He said the Congress party-led government wanted the railways' performance to match "the best in the world" and to make sure that the system was "solid -- like gold".
The National Crime Records Bureau, which gathers the causes of fatalities across India, says 25,705 people died on the railways in 2009, the latest overall figures available.
Trivedi said the government aims to spend a record 601 billion rupees ($12 billion) in the financial year 2012-13 on improving safety and tracks, building new lines and introducing new trains including 75 express trains.
He added that upgrading the British colonial-era railway network and improving safety will need 14 trillion rupees over the next decade.
To help fund the improvements, the cash-strapped railway hiked passenger and freight fares for the first time in a decade, drawing sharp condemnation from opposition politicians.
The railways -- still the main form of long-distance travel in India despite fierce competition from new airlines -- run thousands of passenger and freight trains and carries millions of people daily.
But derailments, collisions and other accidents are common.
The railway budget is presented separately from the national budget, to be announced Friday, due to the huge freight and passenger volume.
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