Tuesday, November 15, 2011
By Pranjal Gera
Maruti Suzuki to increase the number of driving schools in India
With an initiative to make people in the country aware about the road safety, Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) now seems geared up to double its number of driving schools to 400 in the next couple of years.
Around 10 Lakh people in India have been trained in the last decade by the company. National Road Safety Mission (NRSM), the MSI run program has trained around 5 Lakh people in India out of the 10 Lakh people trained; the program was launched in December 2008.
Mr. Mayank Pareek, managing executive officer for sales and marketing at MSI said that the company has educated over 10 lakh people and now considers doubling up its numbers of driving schools to 400 in next two-three years.
The largest car maker of the nation has 192 driving schools along with a connected network of 6 Institutes of Driving and Traffic Research (IDTR).
In every Indian state, wherever the company has existence it has worked in alliance with the state administrations in order to create awareness among individuals about road safety. The company has also established IDTR institutes in the cities to institutionalize driving training.
On November 14th MSI achieved a feat of completing driving education of around 5 Lakh people. Nearly 1.47 Lakh people were educated who belonged to the financially challenged divisions of the society, many of them are working as volunteers with an aim to create awareness.
Mr. Pareek said that in India every year around 1.60 Lakh lives are lost due to accidents occurring on roads. With the growing auto segment in the country there is also a need to commence a top quality training institutes, and that will assist us to institutionalize high quality training program on road safety, he added.
Since the year 2000 MSI has been functioning on making people awake on road safety part. In 2008, the auto firm decided to grant an official formation to this initiative and hence NRSM was established.
