CHILDREN ATTEND SCHOOL AT THE COST OF THEIR LIVES !

SAMBALPUR: Ever day after her child leaves for school Pushpalata Mishra of Sambalpur town spends the entire anxiously till her child is back home safely. And she is not worried about her child getting kidnapped or her inability to complete her homework, but thevan in which she travels. The van in which Pushapalata sends her child to school is run on LPG and she is apprehensive about the impending danger. But with no other alternative, she had little options about the transportation of her only child to school.And the tense moments Pushpalata spends at home till her child is back home is not a solitary case. There are numerous parents who seem to have been caught between the deep sea and the devil. With the schools not having transportation arrangement of their own, the parents are forced to fall back on private transportation arrangement who have been using LPG cylinders to run vehicles, mostly van, crammed with children. To add to the woes, the roads are uneven with potholes dominating the arterial roads and there is every possibility of the van and the auto rickshaws which on these arterial roads meeting with some kind of accidents or the other.Carrying school children in vans fitted with domestic LPG cylinders has become a lucrative business for the vehicle owners of the town. As use of LPG cylinder is heavily subsidized it is cost effective for the vehicle owners who prefer it against normal fuel to earn easy bucks. These used vehicles mostly unfit which are procured from New Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Raipur are put in such business offering fast money at the cost of children who travel in these vans. Even they cut down their expenditure on driver and keep inexperienced drivers, who are not only harsh to the children but drive speedily. And coupled with open use of domestic LPG Cylinders by hotels and restaurants, it is the common men who have to shell out Rs. 500 for each LPG cylinder with the dealers also running out of stock of LPG giving them an equal opportunity to make quick money.Contacted Regional Transport Officer, Ramesh Chandra Sai said that he had undertaken a drive and had fined four vehicles for using LPG cylinder. Informing that even vehicles with private registration are being used to ferry students, he lamented that it was the parents who opposed the action on the plea that their children were late in reaching school. He however, assured that once the ongoing school examination is over, he would heavily penalize those running school vans and deploy squads in school to nab vehicles once the children are dropped at school.