Parents help kids beat bus stir to reach school

Updated on: Thursday, December 22, 2011

School buses went off the roads in Mumbai on December 20 but that did not stop students from ensuring close to full attendance in all classes. Schools were happy to see that parents took time off their schedules to ensure that their children did not miss out on classes. The buses will be back on the roads from December 21.

“Even those students who we thought would bunk school were present. We were really happy to see parents waiting at the gate after school to pick up their children,” said Natasha Mehta, principal of Euro School, Navi Mumbai.

The school had declared a holiday for the pre-primary classes to avoid causing inconvenience to children and their parents. “Some parents also enquired with us if the bus strike will continue on Wednesday and were happy to learn that it was only a one-day strike,” added Mehta.

Most schools were pleased with the attendance on Tuesday. “Parents were so cooperative that nobody questioned us when we asked them to arrange for transport on their own for a day,” said Poonam Arora, principa lof Bombay Cambridge School in Andheri (W).

The strike, called by the School Bus Owners’ Association (SBOA), was announced to protest against alleged harassment by RTO officials who had been inspecting school buses to check if all the rules under the newly introduced safety policy were being followed.

For the first time, the protest spread to other parts of the state and bus contractors in Nashik, Pune and Nagpur, too, joined hands and stayed off the roads. “We can’t thank them enough for the solidarity they have shown. We now hope to get positive feedback from the government regarding our problems,” said Anil Garg, president of SBOA.

Schools that run their own buses did not face any problems at all. “As we don’t depend on an external contractor, our students travel only by management-run buses,” said Jyotsna Roberts, principal of Oxford Public School, Kandivli (W). She added that a few schools complained of poor attendance in the lower classes.

SBOA will present a memorandum to the transport and education departments soon. “If we don’t get a reply from the government within seven days, we will go on an indefinite strike,” said Garg.

Times View

Any attempt at disrupting a school-goer’s daily routine to prove a point against the administration is blackmail. Experts in the field of school bus safety say bus operators have failed to implement several measures designed to make the ride to and from school safer; and operators say some of the measures are not practical to implement, given Mumbai’s road conditions. Both may have a point. But forcing the administration’s hand by hitting a soft target —school-going kids and their parents—is not one of the better ways of making that point. Bus owners must understand that parents entrust them with their children’s safety and there cannot be any compromise on that.

One would have thought that bus operators would learn from the Sion mishap; it has been said that properly placed grilles on the bus window could have prevented the tragedy. But the strong-arm tactics on show, the language of denial and the threats of an indefinite strike indicate a refusal to learn any lesson from an entirely avoidable death.

Parents help kids beat bus stir to reach school

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