Bill requiring highway concessionaires to adopt public safety measures advances to second reading in Congress

Press release from the Ministry of Public Works of Chile

This is an automated translation of the press release issued in Spanish

The bill that requires concessionaires to adopt protection and safety measures in road works has been put on the second reading. In this way, it will now be the Chamber of Deputies that will have to study the bill that was unanimously approved yesterday by the Senate.

The bill establishes that it will be the responsibility of the concessionaire to adopt surveillance, security and assistance measures, through the installation of security cameras, thermal cameras, lighting systems and license plate readers, among others. In addition, it establishes the obligation to deliver the information captured by the surveillance systems to the police and the Public Prosecutor's Office.

The Minister of Public Works , Jessica López, highlighted that this project “seeks to improve security. Not only road safety, which is a natural part of the work done by the concessionary companies, but, in this case, citizen security. This is important to us and that is how we have acted. We have already made progress with the incorporation of security measures, for example, with the installation of cameras, more than a thousand lights, 120 license plate readers, in short, we are moving forward not only in the installation of this security infrastructure, but also in something more strategic and more important, which is sharing the information generated here with Carabineros de Chile and the Ministry of the Interior.”

Minister López also highlighted that the Ministry of Public Works has the Good Neighbor program, with an investment of nearly USD$ 350 million, intended over a period of five years to improve the quality of life and security of those who are neighbors of the concessioned works. “Here, infrastructure works, particularly road works, have impacted the communities that live in their surroundings and we are therefore looking for, through these resources, ways to mitigate. We are talking about installing acoustic panels, incorporating parks at the intersections of routes, and we are incorporating a set of elements that allow us to improve the quality of public works in people's lives.”

The bill establishes the obligation to incorporate these security measures in all new road works tenders and provides that the Ministry of Public Works, in coordination with the Ministry of the Interior, amend the contracts of current road concessions that do not have security measures, within a maximum period of five years, to incorporate the surveillance, security and assistance obligations contemplated in the bill.