Safety deadline for school vehicles in Kolkata

KOLKATA: Transport minister Subhendu Adhikari on Thursday issued ultimatum to vehicle operators, who have been ferrying students without complying with basic safety norms and fulfilling commercial registration obligations. He also made GPS and panic button a must in all school vehicles.
"The vehicles will have to comply with basic safety norms by October 31, after which they vehicles not complying the basic minimum norms will not be allowed to ply in Kolkata and the rest of Bengal," the minister said at a workshop organised by the schoolbus operators.He also said this would be the last chance for private vehicles ferrying students to get commercially registered. convert to commercial registration entity. Vehicles registered before 2006 will not be allowed to ply.
The minister said, "If you can't follow rules, don't bring out vehicles. The state government will arrange alternative livelihood of drivers. Each pooled car has to undergo fitness and pollution tests. These are some basic rules for operating pooled cars in Bengal."
The minister also said that there would be crackdown on hinted continuity of raids against errant school vehicles. "The crackdown will continue and there will be action against vehicles flouting rules," he added. A senior transport department officer said that the continuous raid has yielded a positive results with a lot of school vehicles now falling in line.
The event was also attended by additional director general of police (traffic) K L Tamta, additional commissioner (I) of Kolkata Police Vineet Goyal and deputy commissioner of police Kalyan Mukherjee. "We have come up with a booklet with 46 rules which must be followed by every vehicle carrying students. Since the students are aged between three and sixteen years, we carry students ranging from three-year-old to 16-year-old, we have to be extra-cautious and take more responsibility," said Contract Carriage Owners' Welfare Association secretary Himadri Ganguli.
The contract carriage association has agreed to install GPS in every vehicle. "We had words with the agency and will avail instalments to buy the gadgets," said Ganguli. Once the system is in place, guardians can track the vehicles through a mobile app.
Meanwhile, the transport department has also set an October 31 deadline for installing speed governors in vehicles ferrying students. Over-speeding is one of the reasons behind the accidents. October 31, no school vehicle can exceed 40 kmph speed-limit.
The transport department and Kolkata Police have already entered into an agreement with IIT-Kharagpur for developing safety and security features of school vehicles. IIT-Kharagpur has developed a system that will make trips to and fro schools will be lot more secured.