New Delhi, Mar 19 (IANS): Emphasising on the safety of passengers, Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday asked the railway officials to take pro active steps towards sensitising passengers against smoking in trains.

While holding a review meeting on safety measures with the board members and general managers of zonal railways, Goyal said, "Safety remains the focus area of railway operations and no one should let the guard down on that front."

He said that a thorough review and rechecking of all safety measures in running of trains needs to be taken up by all concerned.

While reviewing the safety performance, the Minister advised to focus on remedial measures for safety hazards like fire and ensuring alertness for signals and crossings.

He asked the officers to focus on root cause analysis of breaches in safety and advised launching a safety drive.

He said that erring passengers need to be deterred from causing problems for others by smoking in the trains.

He also instructed that strict monitoring needs to be done to ensure that the quality of materials utilised in manufacturing of the train coaches is of best possible quality.

The safety performance of Indian Railways has improved over the past three years through various safety measures undertaken in mission mode like elimination of all unmanned level crossings on broad gauge since January, 2019, rehabilitation of bridges, track renewals, production of ICF coaches stopped from January 2018 and safer LHB coaches being built, accelerated replacement of old mechanical signalling with electronic signalling, introduction of indigenous train collision avoidance system (TCAS), mechanised maintenance and inspection of tracks and bridges and simulator based training of locomotive pilots.