Follow SC order on children’s transportation: Rights panel

Dehradun, September 22 

The State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) yesterday asked the Uttarakhand government to implement the Supreme Courts’’s guidelines on safe transportation of school children, alleging widespread violation of the directives.

In a letter to Uttarakhand Chief Secretary S Ramaswamy, Commission chairman Yogendra Khanduri said the Supreme Court guidelines issued on December 1997 for safe transportation of children in school buses were being openly violated in many parts of the state and issued a list of 12 suggestions which could help in improving the situation.

The suggestions made by the commission include appointment of drivers for school buses only if they have at least five years’’ experience of driving heavy vehicles.

Before appointing drivers for school buses, the administration must ensure that the persons being engaged for the purpose have never been penalised or challaned on account of overspeeding, rash or drunk driving.

The people, who have been challaned twice in a year for traffic rule violations, cannot be appointed by the schools as drivers of the buses, Khanduri said.

The speed of school buses should be regulated and speed governors should be installed in them. No school bus without an eligible conductor as per Motor Vehicle Rule 1973 should be allowed to ply on the roads, according to the suggestions.

Other suggestions include making mandatory for a woman assistant to travel in school buses carrying girls, safe closable doors for all such vehicles besides a ban on overloading.

No school bus should be allowed to carry more than the specified number of children. School buses must have the names, classes, addresses and blood groups of children they are carrying besides a first aid box, a fire extinguisher, the vehicle’’s route plan and its points of stoppage, it said.

If a kindergarten child using school transportation is not picked up by his guardian at the appointed stoppage he should be brought back to the school and the guardian concerned should be contacted, it added.  — PTI

The suggestions

• Appointment of only experienced drivers for school buses
• The speed of school buses should be regulated. 
• No school bus without an eligible conductor as per Motor Vehicle Rule 1973 should be allowed to ply making mandatory for a woman assistant to travel in school buses carrying girls, safe closable doors, etc.
• No school bus should be allowed to carry more than the specified number of children. 
• School buses must have the names, classes, addresses and blood groups of children they are carrying besides a first aid box, a fire extinguisher, the vehicle's route plan and its points of stoppage
• The administration must ensure that the persons being engaged for the purpose have never been penalised or challaned on account of overspeeding, rash or drunk driving