Kumari Palany & Co

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In Chennai, as many as 14 school buses found to be unsafe for the students

Posted on: 16/May/2019 9:44:58 AM
Many students prefer going to their schools by school buses these days as they find it comfortable. The Road Safety Council conducted an inspection on the school buses and it is now brought out that as many as 14 school buses were found unsafe and not worthy enough to be driven on the roads.

As many as 150 school buses were checked in the last 2 days by the School Bus Inspection Committee belonging to 4 regional offices or RTOs namely K.K. Nagar, Valasaravakkam, Tondiarpet and Pulianthope. The point is on Tuesday the staff belonging to RTO K.K. Nagar and Valasaravakkam inspected 124 buses and on Wednesday staffs of RTO Tondiarpet and Pulianthope inspected 26 school buses.

As per a senior official belonging to RTO Valasaravakkam, it is clear that 12 school buses were not eligible for issuing fitness certificate of FC by the committee. The buses had problems like defective emergency doors and fire extinguishers beyond their expiry date. Important information is the committee has given one week time for the schools running these buses to fix the issues.

This inspection of school buses is an annual exercise and is carried out by the School Bus Inspection Committee whose head is the Chennai collector. There are also others like Revenue Divisional Officers, traffic police and RTO staffs in the committee. Important point is under the TN Motor Vehicles (Regulation and Control of School Buses) Special Rules, 2012, inspection was done. The FC or Fitness Certificate would be issued by the committee based on as many as 25 compulsory criteria are known.

Various mandatory parameters are installation of emergency exit doors, fire extinguishers, speed governors to prevent rash driving, sticking of school bus symbol plus others such as putting window grills on both sides, provisioning of racks for keeping school bags under the seats and installation of first aid box. The driver of the school bus must have an experience of 5 years and this would be checked by the officials plus the credentials of the attendants would also be checked. Inspection would be conducted by the RTOs belonging to North, North West, South and South east on Thursday.