Union of Railways (UIC) hosts the Security Awareness Day

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In December 2015, the General Assembly of the International Union of Railways (UIC) took the decision to launch a 2016 Additional Security Programme, following the terrorist attacks in France. This programme is based on an interactive process including a questionnaire to the UIC members and two security weeks organised in 2016 and includes dissemination of the results in the first half of 2017. The results of the additional programme were validated during the UIC security congress in Helsinki (November 2016) and during the UIC General Assembly, in December 2016.

The third security week is currently taking place at UIC (6 โ€“ 9 June); it will be the opportunity to share the outcomes of the additional programme which includes three topics: Training and Communication, Information exchange for international trains and Crisis Management.

Preceded the previous day by the third seminar on terrorism (the first seminar was requested by the CEOs after the attacks of January 2015), the awareness day is the first in the field. During the various types of work conducted, it was decided to create an Awareness Day to inform and mobilise railway staff and the public concerning security issues, beyond the actions already carried out by the UIC members. For this awareness day, it was agreed that each company could choose its own security topic. Eight approaches were taken to be presented on 8 June including DB AG (Germany), SNCB (Belgium), NS (Netherlands), VIA Rail (Canada), Thalys (France/Belgium), FS (Italy), SNCF (France) and Indian Railways in cooperation with Railway Protection Force (RPF) (India).

All the debates and the presentations of the UIC security week, including the approaches presented during the awareness day, will be analysed at the next Steering Committee on 9 June 2017, in order to determine the main future courses of action.

Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, UIC Director General, said:
โ€œToday’s sessions will be different. Firstly, because they concern security in general, not just terrorism, and it is important for our customers and staff to develop a security policy which creates an everyday level and feeling of security which bolster the attractiveness and efficiency of rail as a mode of transport.
Secondly, because they are our response to a specific request from the UIC members: at the General Assembly of December 2015, members asked for and agreed to fund an additional security work programme for 2016, the results of which were to be widely disseminated during the first half of 2017. The programme’s execution was validated by the General Assembly of December 2016, and the moment has now come to present the key results. These results are milestones in what needs to become an ongoing process: achievements and experience feeding into the various databases, toolboxes and procedures developed during the programme. Great strides have been made on the three topics in the programme: interoperability and exchange of security-related information on international trains, crisis management, and training and communication.
And lastly, because these sessions are an opportunity to stress that security is everybody’s business, and that as well as the professional skills of dedicated security staff, it is vital to draw on the contributions of other categories of worker and involve passengers in ensuring their own security.
Security is everybody’s business or it is nothing.
That was the impetus behind today, UIC’s first “Security awareness day”, the aim of which is to rally our forces and present the specific security actions taken by our members in the shape of 8 presentations from the Asia-Pacific, European, and North American regions.โ€

About the author

Avatar of Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen Thomas Steinmetz has continuously worked in the travel and tourism industry since he was a teenager in Germany (1977).
He founded eTurboNews in 1999 as the first online newsletter for the global travel tourism industry.

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