Though the rigorous checking drives for making the natives aware about the traffic rules have begun in the State Capital but the district administration is yet to ensure the safety of children boarding school buses daily.
Despite several reminders, the school authorities are yet to follow the guidelines. Putting several children lives at stake, although at times, surprise checking of school buses is conducted but no stern action is taken against the offenders.
Notably, following the guidelines and prescribed norms of the Supreme Court (SC), the District Administration and Regional Transport Authority (RTA) in April 2016 had issued instructions to all the schools in the State capital to equip buses with safety gadgets to ensure the safety of children. Taking a cue after the District Administration’s order, schools had decided to install closed circuit cameras (CCTVs), Global Positioning System (GPS) trackers, speed governors of specified standard for school students’ convenience who avail bus facilities.
When asked, authorities looked the other way. “Safety of kids is our priority. A reminder has been sent to all school managements to equip the buses with the safety gadgets at the earliest. Soon a rigorous checking drive will begin and offenders will be penalised. Since, we have manpower crunch so it becomes difficult for us to conduct checking drives regularly. Those schools violating orders are on the Department radar,” said SP (Traffic) Sanjay Ranjan Singh.
Similarly, playing the same old broken record, District Transportation Officer (DTO), Nagendra Paswan, said that the checking drive would begin soon and action against school managements including the drivers driving the unfit buses will be taken without being biased.
Also as per the State Government notification, all the school buses must have speed governors embedded into it. Similarly, all the schools had agreed on installing GPS trackers besides keeping breathe analyzers on campus premises. More than 80 schools are operating in the Capital city and most of the day scholar students studying in different schools avail school bus service. However, during the checking drive most of the school buses plying in different routes have failed to fulfill the safety norms of the apex court.
“The idea to install CCTVs, GPS trackers, keeping breath analyzers along with speed regulators came as the suggestive measures on April 26, 2016 from the district administration side in the meeting held with the Regional Transport Authority (RTA) officials, school management personnel and respective bus staffs but none of the suggestive measures have been implemented even after one year,” said Jharkhand Parents Association’s Ajay Rai.
From 2016, keeping breath analyzers on school campuses were made mandatory. The SC too in the bus safety directives clearly mentions that a driver who has been challaned even once for the offence of over speeding, dangerous driving and drunken driving cannot be employed in school bus service.
“Instructions have already been issued to all school managements to arrange set of breathe analyzers to check and analyze the health of transport personnel at a regular interval. However, at present we are not having any record as of now how many schools have purchased breathe analyzers and whether they are regularly keeping the health track record of the drivers and conductors or not,” added Paswan.
When contacted some top rated day-boarding school managements, maximum school principals claimed that they are in the process of decking up their school buses with all modern electronic gadgets. Nevertheless, as the new academic session has just begun, the procedure requires some more time to get complete claimed the school principals.