Proposition de résolution visant à la diffusion par le groupe SNCB de son numéro d'urgence gratuit 0800/30 230, afin de renforcer la sécurité et le sentiment de sécurité sur le réseau ferroviaire belge.
General information ¶
- Authors
- PS | SP Anthony Dufrane, André Frédéric, Karine Lalieux, Rachid Madrane, Linda Musin, Éric Thiébaut
- Submission date
- Oct. 1, 2010
- Official page
- Visit
- Status
- Adopted
- Requirement
- Simple
- Subjects
- security services resolution of parliament public safety telephone rail transport
Voting ¶
- Voted to adopt
- Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld N-VA LDD MR
- Voted to reject
- ∉
- Abstained from voting
- VB
Contact form ¶
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Discussion ¶
March 21, 2012 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)
Full source
Rapporteur Jef Van den Bergh ⚙
Mr. Speaker, as the title indicates, the resolution is about making known the NMBS emergency number. That is necessary. The number is not well known to the travellers.
Initially, the submitters of the motion for a resolution indicated that this should primarily be done by an indication on the paper tickets of the NMBS. After the discussion in the committee, we have reached a consensus with various parties to ⁇ advocate for a wider publication of the emergency number, not only on the tickets, though that may be one of the elements, but also in the stations, the trains and so on.
The essence of this resolution is the wider disclosure of the emergency number of the NMBS.
Until then, my brief report.
Linda Musin PS | SP ⚙
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, Mrs. Secretary of State, dear colleagues, I will be brief because I refer you, for more details, to the excellent report of my colleague Jef van Den Bergh.
The 2011 statistics of the SNCB Group show that insecurity and feelings of insecurity remain a worrying current on the railway and across the railway infrastructure.
In 2011, there were 1,547 acts of violence, whether insults, threats, minor violence or even beats and injuries, an increase of 3% in one year and 19% in two years. The staff of the SNCB Group is obviously the first exposed to bad mood, verbal but also sometimes physical aggression, as we are reminded of the aggression of three train escorts last weekend.
But if the staff is most exposed to this unqualifiable violence, it is all railway users who may one day find themselves confronted or witnessing unacceptable acts.
Nevertheless, many measures have been taken by the SNCB Group to combat insecurity and feelings of insecurity, such as the multiplication of video surveillance cameras and the additional assignment of qualified personnel on the ground. Thus, the SNCB has set up a service that ensures, thanks to the free emergency number 0800/30 230, real-time monitoring of issues related to the safety of shippers and staff.
Camera surveillance and alarm processing are also handled centrally by the same service. This emergency number is therefore fundamental as it allows all people who take the train, all victims or witnesses of violence to alert a service specially set up to intervene quickly.
To make known its free emergency number to the general public, the SNCB had launched, in early 2008, a communication campaign in the stations and other non-kept stops in the form of posters. Since then, from time to time, a display campaign is launched to remind the existence and importance of this emergency number but concretely, unless you are at the foot of one of these posters in a large station, who knows that number? Who would be able, seeing a person be attacked, to compose this number? The answer is obvious: very few people, unfortunately!
In short, there is a real deficit of visibility for this emergency number. Obviously, an unseen and unknown emergency number is, you will agree, useless.
Dear colleagues, this resolution initially required that the emergency number should in the future appear on all the transport tickets issued by the SNCB. In this way, every shuttle carrier would have on him, permanently, that famous number of which very few rail users know the existence today.
The committee discussions have enabled the extension of the scope of this resolution, which not only calls on the SNCB Group to add its emergency number to the transport bills, which are currently issued by the public enterprise, but also to proactively study with regional transport companies, partners of the MoBIB project, the possibility and the possibility of registering this emergency number or a future common emergency number on this new MoBIB chip card format.
In addition to this entry on the transport bills, our resolution also encourages the SNCB Group to multiply the display of the free emergency call number across its entire network, whether small or large stations, unguarded stops, parking lots, trains, etc.
I would like to thank my colleagues in the Infrastructure Committee, who have supported and broadened the scope of this resolution, which ultimately proposes simple measures – basic but effective, I hope – which will make it easier to make known an emergency number that, one day, could be useful to all shuttles and all railroads.
Tanguy Veys VB ⚙
Mr. Speaker, colleagues, we will not adopt this resolution, not so much because we are not awake of the insecurity, but because we feel that this resolution is not in place.
The problem is not so much that people cannot report that they are victims of violence. The problem is that they are victims of violence. As long as the railway police and Securail are not able, not authorized, have insufficient crews or do not have the proper status to address the insecurity, we may, if necessary, tattoo the staff with that free number or put it on T-shirts or large balloons, or may everyone ignore it, but that will not address the problem of insecurity and of aggression against the NMBS staff and train passengers.
Parliament must first and foremost signal to the Minister that the insecurity and the aggressors must be addressed and that one should not focus so much on the knowledge of that green number. Hopefully the Minister will pass that on to the various parts of the NMBS and possibly also to his colleagues from Justice and Home Affairs.
As for that green number, the Security Operations Center has been around for a few years. Initially, a campaign was launched. That is logical. Every minister likes to have something new and thus puts himself in the flowers; in this case it is the free green number. The result was that there were a number of calls in the first years, but it was remarkable that this number declined year after year. I do not have the figures with me, but then Minister Vervotte gave them at the time. The number of calls to that call center decreased, while the number of cases of aggression against train passengers or train staff increased.
In what could that lie? This was, on the one hand, due to the fatigue of the NMBS staff itself. Studies, including from a criminologist at the VUB, showed that the NMBS staff itself is no longer willing to report that crime. The reasons for this are diverse. It takes too much work and requires too much administration. Per ⁇ one is afraid that one would be fooled by their own bosses who might think that a certain railway supervisor who often reports may be a difficult person, or not customer-friendly. Per ⁇ he does his job, but he is just driving on a line where many aggressors take the train because they are left untouched.
However, this is not taken into account. Hence the decrease in the number of declarations both by the train staff and by the train passenger. If a laptop is stolen, the traveller thinks that it does not make sense to make a declaration. Why would a traveler indicate it if someone is smoking cannabis on the train?
This problem was addressed last year, although the government was in ongoing affairs. I then asked the competent minister, Mrs. Vervotte, if she herself did not find it strange that despite the fact that the number of cases of aggression increased, the number of calls still decreased. However, it did not immediately have any evidence of any correlation. I told her then that I had taken the test on the sum myself. I had gone to the stations Brussel Centraal, Gent St.-Pieters and Gent Dampoort and noticed that the number was almost nowhere to be seen, except here and there on an entrance door. For the rest, the number was neither visible on the perrons, nor in the entrance hall, nor in the waiting houses, nor on the train itself. This question responds in part to this. This call will be provided, including on the ticket.
However, colleagues, do not think that this is blissful and that it is the great solution for addressing the insecurity. Unfortunately not. There may be some more calls. Per ⁇ the call center will now be overloaded by calls. There may also be people calling for the service schedule. So I think there is still some work to be done.
The number will also be applied to the MoBIB card. However, I would like to point out to my colleagues that the MoBIB card is not an initiative of the NMBS. The car of the MoBIB card had already left before the NMBS jumped on it. If one wants to expand that now suddenly for the MIVB and De Lijn, then one must still realize very well that the call center was created specifically for the infrastructure of the NMBS, specifically for incidents in stations and on the train. Suppose that one is faced with aggression in a subway station or in a bus and calls the green number, then one comes to a call center that can at most reference because one can hardly send Securail to a bus that is standing somewhere in Ganshoren at a stop. That means something very different.
For the sake of convenience, we want to initiate the necessary consultation. It is quite free to ask such a question. I think it is not really appropriate to use this resolution for that purpose.
We cannot approve it because it is a wrong signal and because it offends then-Minister Vervotte and her lax attitude. Minister Magnette had also not immediately invented the hot water by declaring that the green number should be promoted.
I understand that the knowledge and presence of that number can be a tool but it will not be the big solution. So we will remember.