East Singhbhum district traffic police on Thursday resumed its crackdown on overloaded school vans after about a week. East Singhbhum senior superintendent of police Anoop T. Mathew gave orders for crackdown. The District traffic police constituting 12 teams comprising of five members each raided the approach roads to schools across the city.
During the drive around 131 overloaded school vans seized from different parts of the city. Earlier, the Deputy Superintendent of Police (Traffic), district transport officer and MV Inspector used to conduct drives along with traffic cops at one locations at a time and as a result they could cover at the most four or five locations in a day with most of the schools assembly timing being between 7am - 8 am.According to RTA guidelines, autos running on petrol can carry four students, while the limit for diesel-powered three-wheelers is six. Vans can ferry up to eight students.
East Singhbhum district transport officer (DTO), Sanjay Kujur said that will be regularly carried near the school premises. "We constituted 12 teams in different traffic police stations and these teams were deputed at approach roads to different schools. We will continue the drive irrespective of the threats of the school van drivers," said traffic DSP Vivekanand Thakur. Simultaneous crackdowns were conducted on roads in Bistupur, Sakchi, Mango, Jugsalai and Golmuri.
The traffic DSP further said that as per permit they will allow only three students in small auto rickshaws, five in diesel make auto-rickshaws and eight in vans. Overloading invites a minimum fine of Rs 2,000 under the Motor Vehicles Act.Meanwhile the van operators are also not happy with the drive launched by the traffic police. Concerned with surprise checks, some van operators have even started carrying few children these days and are asking the parents to drop their children from their own vehicles for the time being.
According to officials of transport department in order to garner more returns, the van operators take in large number of children opposite to the capacity of the vans. This may result to a major accident any time. This is the prime reason they have acted against them.Ahmed Khan, another van operator said, "We are poor lot of people and rely on school children for our daily bread. If police would limit the number of children to be travelled then it would be difficult for us to survive".
Meanwhile, Jamshedpur School Vahan Chalak Sangh (an outfit of school van drivers) today decided to go again on an indefinite strike from tomorrow to protest police drive against overloaded school vans. Rameshwar Prasad, a van operator of Sacred Heart Convent says, "We are forced to take more children because of the rising fuel prices and road tax. We have even asked the parents to hike our charges, but they are not willing. In such a scenario, we have no choice but to go for overloading. It's becoming difficult to run our businesses."