Parents take up cudgels for student’s safety

Parents have begun to take the safety of their children on school buses in their own hands, abandoning the ‘’leave it to the school’’ attitude. After nine year old boy died due to negligence of the school bus safety norms, parents through the Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) are playing an active role to ensure that the school bus contractors are following the safety norms.

Safety of school buses is being actively discussed in PTA meetings and public forums. In a meeting between RTO officials, school bus operators and parents on Saturday, a large number of parents questioned the authorities over the safety norms to be implemented in school buses.

Raju Tirmallee, a parent from a school in Dombivli said, ‘’Parents can no longer afford to trust only their school management to lookout for their children’s safety. Incidents like the Sion school bus mishap and earlier the Panvel bus fire have proved that there is a lack of safety . We need to hold government and school bus owners accountable for it.’’

The parents demanded that the school bus drivers and attendants who come in direct contact with the children should be trained by officials so that they understand how to use the safety equipments provided by the new norms.  A parent member of PTA United Forum, Rajashree Natu, said, ‘’The new norms talk about safety equipment like fire extinguishers, iron bars, first aid kit, among others. We need to train the driver and the attendant to use these safety measures so that they can protect the children during an emergency. We should teach them how to look out for the children. Unless that is done, safety cannot be achieved.’’