The district transport officer of Hazaribagh Shabbir Kumar made a surprise inspection of school buses and other vehicles of private schools of Vishnugarh block on Friday. In this surprise inspection DTO himself got surprised when he saw six students sitting on a single seat. When he counted the students sitting inside a school vehicle found 26 students and as per the paper this vehicle was permitted to carry only 10.
DTO Shabbir Kumar inspected the vehicles used by private schools to carry the students from their residence to school and back for more than four hours and found many irregularities. Talking to newsmen he said that the owners of these vehicles are not only disobeying the guidelines fixed by Supreme Court of India but also not possessing requisite papers.
Kumar said that as per guidelines of the apex court the name of school and its phone number should clearly be written on both sides of the vehicle but here no one is following it. As per guideline the name of driver, conductor, agent, capacity of the vehicle, grill covered windows, presence of firefighting equipment etc. are mandatory but in not a single vehicle these norms have been found fulfilled.
During this four hour long checking drive DTO inspected more than two dozen vehicles carrying the students and got surprised that in majority of them the requisite papers were also not available. Taking it seriously he said that he is going to take action against all erring schools and the vehicle owners. The schools will get legal notices soon and will have to reply otherwise action will be taken as per law.
He said that it is the responsibility of the schools to use a vehicle for transportation of students as per the guidelines of apex court. Recently the apex court has added installation of CCTV cameras and GPS system in the vehicles used for this purpose and he will try his best that every school and its vehicle should adhere to the guidelines of the court.