The Locomotive Engineers Association has made a request stating that the night patrol services that were being carried out by the Railway Department are not being implemented properly, which is a reason for accidents such as train derailments in Wanawasala.
The Chairman of the Association, Jeeva Gunawardena, stated that if the night patrol services were implemented properly, such accidents could be prevented, so steps should be taken to resume the services immediately.
He also requested the Railway Department to pay close attention to the awareness given to the control room or other departments based on the facts observed by the driver during the train operation.
Expressing further, the Chairman of the Locomotive Engineers Association, Jeeva Gunawardena, stated as follows.
”Before the train that was derailed, two trains were running from there. One of them was the night mail train number 84 coming from Trincomalee. The driver of that train had noticed some kind of fault in the control signal near Wanawasala. With that, he had stopped the train there and informed the railway control room about it.
And after that, the train had proceeded on the instructions received from there. After that, the night mail train coming from Kankesanthurai had also stopped at the control signal near Wanawasala railway station due to the delay of that train and had proceeded. It was the train number 507 that had come after that that had met with this accident. Then that train had also been stopped at that railway station and had proceeded on its way.
Actually, this accident had occurred due to some kind of sabotage at the point where the road used for the garbage dump was connected to the main road. Here, what we really have to request as an association is that the patrol services that were previously deployed by the Railway Department for night patrols, which were deployed by the Road Industry Division, are now not actually taking place. We request the Railway Department to immediately implement these services to prevent such accidents in the future.
We also request the Railway Department to act responsibly regarding the facts seen and observed by the train driver during this train operation and the information provided by the train control room or other departments based on those observations.”