“Passenger cabs and minibuses used simultaneously for both the routine passenger services and as well as transport facilities of school children without the consent of transport department is an illegal activity.”
Undoubtedly the travel safety of school children is always a concern for the parents in Kashmir like people in other parts of the country and as such Regional Transport Officer (RTO) Kashmir’s recent decision to introduce the policy of permits for school buses is a path breaking initiative obviously taken with the spirit of ensuring travel safety of school children. Passenger cabs and minibuses used simultaneously for both the routine passenger services and as well as transport facilities of school children without the consent of transport department is an illegal activity against which the transport department does not launch any drive to penalise the erring passenger transport operators as per rules governing operation of passenger transport services in Jammu & Kashmir. Administrative wisdom demands that application of route permits to cabs used for transport services of school children is also made equally applicable also to sumo vehicles and mini buses used simultaneously for both the routine passenger transport services and as well as transport services of school children. Since minibuses and sumo vehicles are also being used for transport services of school children besides the routine passenger transport services, the decision of route permits for all practical purposes needs to be equally applied to all kinds of passenger vehicles including cabs, sumo vehicles, mini buses and the buses having capacity of more than 50 seats plying normally on inter district routes. Surprisingly the operators of cabs and sumo vehicles fix and revise travelling charges for children on their own instead of leaving it to the transport department to fix and revise such travelling charges for school children. While the passenger transport operators are bound to charge only 50% of the existing bus fares from school children upto a certain age limit, the operators of cabs and sumo vehicles unfortunately charge almost more than double of the existing bus fares from school children. Though overloading puts to risk the lives of children but neither the transport department nor the traffic police penalises operators of cabs and sumo vehicles for breaking all records of overloading in ferrying children to schools in the morning and evening hours.
Smoothening the operation of school buses, regulating the bus fares fixed by schools themselves instead of transport department could ultimately smoothen the passenger services for school children and curb the illegal transport practices of the operators of cabs and sumo vehicles under the garb of transport facilities to school children”.
Unfortunately cabs, auto rickshaws and sumo vehicles used for transport services have also become a traffic nuisance as they are seen parked outside schools and in the middle of the roads in morning and evening house just to intensify long duration traffic jams at every nook and corner. Though schools buses are exclusively run for the purposes of hassle free transport services to children and as such should have been preferred by parents but with private schools doubling the bus fare and making parents to pay it even for the winter vacation period the cabs and Sumo vehicles consequently become the preferred transport services for parents of school children in Kashmir. Smoothening the operation of school buses, regulating the bus fares fixed by schools themselves instead of transport department could ultimately smoothen the passenger services for school children and curb the illegal transport practices of the operators of cabs and sumo vehicles under the garb of transport facilities to school children
