Bhubaneswar: Schools across the state reopened on Tuesday after the summer vacation. The state government has asked the authorities to follow safety guidelines for children.
The state has asked the regional transport officers to crack down on unsafe school and college buses.
"We have come to know that some buses of schools and colleges have not been following rules and regulations. We have written to the regional transport officers across the state and instructed them to conduct a drive against such school and college buses," said school and mass education minister Badri Narayan Patra.
The regional transport office (RTO) has decided to intensify its crackdown on auto-rickashaws, small vehicles and buses that transport schoolchildren without following norms.
A source said more than 7,000 school and college buses ply across the state. Many of them run without fitness certificates and safety requirements in accordance to the state policy for transporting schoolchildren.
A number of school bus accidents have been reported in the state in the past few years. Experts have expressed concern over the growing incidents of deaths and injuries to children in school buses.
They have been demanding the implementation of Supreme Court (SC) guidelines on school buses, which include installing Global Positioning System (GPS) tracker in buses, and radio-frequency identification (RFID) on the identity cards of students.
Some parents are putting the blame on school authorities for being callous in ensuring safe transportation of students.
"Some schools, knowingly or unknowingly, ignore these sensitive points and put the lives of children at risk," said Manisha Satpathy, a parent of a Class VIII student at a private school in Bhubaneswar.
The Child Welfare Committee of Khurda district has asked all the block education officers of to ensure child safety measures at the schools and institutions with residential facilities.
Schools need to conduct an independent risk assessment of their premises by building boundary walls, having security in place at entry points, adequate lighting and security in isolated areas on the premises and segregation of the boys' and girls' toilets.
Convention
A city-level convention of Mahila Arogya Samiti was organised on the Rabindra Mandap premises in presence of leaders such as MLA (central) Bijaya Kumar Mohanty, MLA (north) Priyadarshi Mishra, mayor Ananta Narayan Jena and deputy mayor K. Shanti. These groups' strength is 617 in the city. They are meant for serving the fellow citizens' health, sanitation and improvement in use of toilets, increased immunisation, decreased infant and maternal mortality in their respective slums.
