CHANGING THE COLOUR OF VEHICLE IS NOT ENOUGH, PARENTS’ MINDSET SHOULD ALSO CHANGE

(By Rons Bantwal)

The main reason behind the accidents in the undivided Dakshina Kannada District is not the government and the police butirresponsible citizens. The parents spend countless money on unnecessary things but do not think about their children’s safety. Neither the parents nor the politicians have any concern about children’s safety.

Nowadays parents do not yearn to instill values in their children; they just want them to become intellectuals. They just want them to score more marks and they fail to teach them the basic life skills. The medium of education has divided the society and children learning in English Mediums are treated as sophisticated and Kannada medium students feel they are inferior.

A child of 20 Kg has to carry a school bag weighing 25 Kg. The parents are forced to send their children by school vehicle even the distance is walk able. Parents dream is to see their children achieving top positions in this global world. Teachers, principal and the school committee always want their school to achieve 100% result. No one cares about the child.

How costly is the school bus? Why school vehicle should be painted in yellow?

Thousands can give thousands of suggestions about this. But, the vehicle owner knows the pain. There are so many buses running on the road daily. Many politicians are the owners of hundreds of buses. But, no one is interested to run a school bus/vehicle? Why?

The owner has to spend four to five lacs to buy omni van and has to pay many types of taxes, RTO, petrol, traffic, insurance, review cost, bank loan, daily maintenance, oil, driver salary, conductor salary, etc. And as per government norms if he takes only 7 children what he will earn? He has to spend 1000 rupees for his vehicle and he will earn less than 200 rupees a day. Once it is painted yellow, it can only be used for school transport. He cannot use his vehicle during vacation, holidays and other times. And nowadays children are very mischievous. It is very difficult to handle them. Some parents simply blame their school bus drivers and conductors and some even go to the police with false accusations. And availability of conductor is also a difficult task because of no job security. All these issues should be discussed and sorted out.

Government is announcing many schemes to attract children to schools. It should think of providing transport to the children. The government has to take some bold steps to minimize these kinds of unfortunate mishaps.