JR East staff to be loaned to JR Hokkaido in bid to raise standards

The Hokkaido Railway Co (JR Hokkaido) has accepted an offer from East Japan Railway Co (JR East) to accept transfer staff in a bid to raise standards at the troubled rail operator.

At a meeting last week, JR East president Tetsuro Tomita declined a request from JR Hokkaido for financial support, but offered technical support and staff loans, Fuji TV reported Wednesday. His offer was made after JR Hokkaido hit headlines when it was discovered it had been running a train on the Okhotsk express service between Sapporo and Abashiri with its automatic emergency brake disabled.

That news came days after the beleaguered railway company announced that unrectified problems had been identified at 97 locations throughout its rail system. In August, the companies began an idea-sharing initiative related to safety management. However, the scheme was halted when the discovery of the unaddressed faults made headlines last month.

In the latest in a series of high-profile problems at the company, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport yesterday said that the company had failed to accurately record the locations of the defects.

Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Akihiro Ota, said section manager class employees would be dispatched from JR East to JR Hokkaido in an attempt to improve the latter's safety record and to create regional parity between the operators.

© Japan Today