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Updated on: Friday, July 24, 2009

Kolkata: Friday’s strike will have a ripple effect upon schools and colleges. While the former are resigned to the fact that there will be skeletal attendance, two of the city’s three universities have postponed their major exams.

Calcutta University (CU) had postgraduate exams in 25 subjects scheduled on Friday and several undergraduate exams. While the undergraduate exams have been shifted to August 10, the PG exams have also been shifted to August, but the dates are yet to be finalized. Rabindra Bharati University has also postponed its exams to August 6. Jadavpur University did not have any exam scheduled on Friday.

Schools said that a lion’s share of their students come to school in privately owned school buses or in car pools, and hence attendance would be severely affected. Authorities said that though they would keep schools open on Friday, there is no compulsion on kids to make it to school.

South Point School, which has over 12,000 kids on its rolls, will be one of the worst hit. The school owns 13 buses, whereas the rest are privately owned. A large number of kids also come to school in pool cars. “We have decided not to bring out our own buses, as these might be attacked by demonstrators. We have informed parents of this decision,” said Krishna Damani, spokesperson.

Some schools, such as Loreto Sealdah, didn’t want to take the risk of calling in children and have, instead, declared Friday a holiday. The school will be open on Saturday to make up for lost time. “Last Friday, kids could not come because of the bandh and hence we had a long weekend. This week, we couldn’t afford to lose another day, and so we are working on Saturday,” said senior teacher Teresa Mendes. Loreto Dharamtala, however, will stay open.

The notice board at St Xavier’s clearly said that kids need not brave the transport strike to come to school. Instead, Saturday has been declared a working day.

St James High School has told parents of boys studying in classes III to VIII that they have to make it to school even if they have to make arrangements themselves.

“We have our annual function for these classes scheduled on Friday and our boys cannot afford to miss it. Since a large number of our boys are dependent on car pools and privately run buses, we had to speak to parents separately,” said principal T H Ireland.

Kids who use car pools do not have much to worry about, as the Pool Car Owners’ Welfare Association is only going for a token strike on Friday. There are about 4000 pool cars that are registered with this association, which will ply as usual after Friday, said secretary Abir Roy.

Those who use privately run buses — about 100,000 students in the city — might have to face the brunt of an indefinite strike. “The government wants us to buy new buses, which cost Rs 20 lakh each. That’s beyond our reach. So, we are going for an indefinite strike,” said Ashoke Guha Biswas, secretary, West Bengal Contract Carriage Owners and Operators Association.

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