KUALA LUMPUR, June 11 — Prasarana Malaysia Bhd (Prasarana) has taken immediate steps to beef up its standard operating procedures (SOP) related to safety, operations, manpower and rail maintenance for the Kelana Jaya Line Light Rail Transit (LRT) service which operates automatically without a driver.

Acting president and chief executive officer of Prasarana Group Datin Norlia Noah in a statement today said that the move was in line with five short-term improvement measures that need to be implemented within three months based on the report of the LRT Collision Incident Investigation Committee.

“These measures are in addition to the existing SOP and international guidelines.

“We are thoroughly reviewing the structure, processes and safety compliance, access control to the tracks, protocols for communications and so on to implement all the short-term recommendations,” she said.

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She said the SOP had also been tightened immediately to tackle any communication disruptions between the Operational Control Centre (OCC) and manually-driven trains.

Norlia said the SOP, which came into effect on May 30, included setting the requirement for two hostlers for all manual trains under the Kelana Jaya Line LRT tunnel between Pasar Seni and Damai stations.

She said the OCC and hostler are required to ensure that the trains are driven in the right direction, without any ambiguity.

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The company had also created Manual Route Reservation (Automatic Train Protection) Buffer Zones for trains that have lost contact with the OCC to stop at a further distance.

“The speed of manual trains was limited to only 20 kilometres (km) per hour and a safety bulletin will be regularly issued to reiterate safety aspects and SOP to all Prasarana employees,” she said.

Prasarana has also ramped up its Mini ERP Exercise every Sunday night with an emphasis on the scenario of “rescuing trains that have lost communication and manually-driven trains”, aiming at improving the capability of staff and the system used, especially those involving areas that are difficult to access such as underground tunnels and viaducts.

Norlia said the training programme would be coordinated in the future with the collaboration of authorities such as the Royal Malaysia Police, the Malaysian Fire and Rescue Department and the Malaysian Civil Defence Force.

She said apart from cooperating with the Committee of Inquiry and liaising with the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Transport and the Land Public Transport Agency, Prasarana’s main focus was to provide appropriate support and assistance to the passengers involved.

Apart from immediate goodwill payment to the passengers involved, she said that Prasarana has also provided financial assistance to cover medical costs, follow-up treatments and other related expenses.

Prasarana also called on the passengers involved to contact the Crisis Line at 014 737 1330 and email at [email protected] to facilitate direct communication on immediate compensation assistance, reimbursement of medical and treatment costs, claims, documentation and access to counselling services.

On behalf of the Prasarana Board of Directors and staff, Norlia also apologised to all Malaysians and passengers in particular for the incident and said that her team accepted the preliminary investigation report of the incident. — Bernama