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| Private School vehicles violate traffic norms with impunity | | |  Rajesh Tandon
Early Times Report
MENDHAR, Feb 1: Scores of private school vehicles including vans and buses ferrying school children in Mendhar Sub Division are openly indulging in violating traffic norms.
The school vehicles are being operated without the mandatory provision of windows having three grills with a maximum gap of 20 centimeters besides over loading. This shows that how the drivers are overlooking the safety norms and are least bothered about the children.
They play with the lives of school children every day by plying their vehicles in violation of the Supreme Court guidelines.
The apex court guidelines are meant for transporters to ensure that children are safely dropped to and from schools. The state transport authority in concurrence with para 63 of Automobile Industry Standards (AIS) dealing with requirements for school buses has issued a guideline that every school bus including vans should be painted yellow .
However, most of the cabs and buses ferrying school children operate in violation of this guideline. Students travelling in jam-packed cabs and bues are a common sight in Mendhar.
The school buses and Cabs also don’t comply with other guidelines of the AIS which entail mandatory ‘School Bus’ sign on the back and front of the bus, first aid boxes and two emergency exits, a ‘speed governor’ of specified standard, horizontal grills on the windows, fire extinguishers, nameplate with telephone number of the concerned school, reliable locks, space under the seats for keeping school bags along with qualified attendant to attend to children.
Shahien Akhter, mother of a class 6th student, blames the schools for the menace as they (schools) run a limited number of buses.
“How will our children reach schools in absence of the requisite number of buses provided by the schools? We are forced to send our children in these private cabs then,” she added.
Locals of the area requested tDistrict Development Commissioner Poonch and ARTO Poonch to intervene in the matter with the schools management and private vehicle drivers (owned by majority of schools) of Mendhar and direct them regarding the consequences.
When contacted, ARTO Poonch Jugal Sharma said that the department will continue to act against those violating norms.
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