School van service need registration, reputation

by Jayampathy Jayasinghe, Ananda Kannangara, L. S. Ananda Vedaarachchi and Harshini Perera
 

Taking children to school daily had assumed a new sub-culture, especially in Colombo and the main provincial towns with hundreds of vans plying to the popular schools in the country. Though the main beneficiary should be the children, school vans are known to be concerned about the profits they make and charge the monthly fee from the parents even during the school vacations.

Pic by Vipula Amerasingha

Neither the school principals, the education authorities nor the police have exact records of the number of school vans nor are there regulations or laws to regulate the school van services, a research conducted by Sunday Observer news desk revealed. Most of the parents and principals, asked to comment, said there should be a regulation of the number of children that each vehicle should carry and the fees they should charge since it was also a public transport system.

Police Civil Committee Co-ordinator SSP, I. Karunaratne said there were around 800 vans that bring schoolchildren to Colombo schools. Of the 193 schools in Colombo 40, were private schools while the other 153 were Government schools and large numbers of children travel in these school vans, sometimes accompanied by their mothers.But parking spaces being not available near most of the schools the children had to wait for a long time after schools close till their van scome to pick them up.

The time taken to reach their schools at the time schools closed was longer than during normal hours of the city due to severe traffic congestion during that time.

There was also a disparity in the fees charged by the school vans to the more popular or leading schools and in the case of a two children travelling to two schools in the same van, the owner of the van charges a higher fee for the child attending the more popular school.

Our research also found there were some vans that transport boys and girls together and in some of those vans there was no lady chaperone to look after the children. Some vans were congested and were very uncomfortable to the children and exceeded the capacity of the seats, but the parents had to patronize those vans as they carried children to schools in certain areas of the city, parents said.

The school vans were not of the same standard as there were high roof, low roof, the standard and air-conditioned vans while a considerable percentage of the vans were too uncomfortable as they were past the number of years the manufacturers recommended. Some of the air-conditioned school buses, a minority, were comfortable but charges high.

Chairman National Child Protection Authority Jagath Wellawatte, said the NCPA conducted seminars for school van drivers - 947 in number at Colombo, Kurunegala, Galle and Kandy. All school vans in the Kandy district were registered under the provincial passenger transport authority.

"However, negligence of their responsibility are common among them. This could lead to even severe harm to children. School vans owners, drivers and aides should understand that they are responsible for the safety and comfort of the children from the time they pick up children and leave them at school and back from school to their homes in the afternoon. They are the caretakers of these children. But a survey conducted by the NCPA had found that a majority of the school van drivers do not understand their heavy responsibility," Rohan Wijesena Legal Officer NCPA said.He said the van drivers and owners have also formed associations of their own and the NCPA organised seminars to educate them.

Police Co-ordinator of Civil Committees SSP I. Karunaratne, commenting on the schoolchildren's transport services, said civil committees were mainly engaged in assisting in the security of bus passengers and each bus stand had a committee established for the task. The safety and security of the passengers included educating the bus conductors and drivers on the prevention terrorist threats.

Minister of Transport and Railways Dullas Alahapperuma recently introduced the policy of Sri Lanka Transport Board school buses, a service that had ceased to exist with the neglect of the SLTB during the past years, and he said beginning with 300 the SLTB school bus service was increased to 500 more recently. Most of the SLTB school buses were serving rural areas including the Eastern Province liberated from the terrorists and some school buses have been sent to Jaffna and Vavuniya also.

There was widespread agreement among parents, teachers, principals and even some school van operators that there should be regulations to ensure high standards in the transport of children by vans or school buses since in a majority of cases the children were not given that service as the main concern of the owners seemed to be profit making, even at the expense of the comfort and safety of the children.