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With less than a month for the re-opening of schools on June 6, a total of 2,948 school vehicles, mostly buses and vans, in Vellore, Ranipet, Tiruvannamalai and Tirupattur districts, are under the scanner of the Regional Transport Officers (RTOs) for their fitness and other safety aspects so that they are capable of transporting students safely.
RTO officials said the on-going assessment, which began a few days ago, is being carried out by the district-level committee on school safety that includes the Revenue Divisional Officer, the Deputy SP, the District Educational Officer and the RTO.
The plan is to complete the assessment by May 15 so that unfit vehicles may do the necessary repairs and get ready before the school re-opening on June 6. “We track all school vehicles regularly by maintaining a separate register for fit and unfit vehicles. We also verify documents of vehicles in the campuses itself prior to the school reopening,” M. Ramalingam, RTO (Ranipet), told The Hindu.
Accompanied by K. Karthikeyan, SP (Tiruvannamalai), Collector D. Bhaskara Pandian inspected school vehicles at the Armed Reserve parade ground in the Tiruvannamalai town on Thursday. A few days ago, the Vellore Collector V. R. Subbulaxmi inspected school vehicles that come under the Vellore and Gudiyatham RTOs.
Among the nine district RTOs including Arani, Cheyyar, Vaniyambadi, Arakkonam, Ranipet, Tirupattur and Vellore, Tiruvannamalai has the highest number of school vehicles at 736, followed by Vellore- 441, Arani- 333, Ranipet- 322 and Vaniyambadi- 255. Arakkonam has the lowest number of school vehicles at 136.
“School vehicle inspections in the Vaniyambadi and Tirupattur RTOs will be carried out tomorrow, May 10. It will be monitored by the Tirupattur Collector K. Tharpagaraj,” said S. Kaliappan, RTO (Tirupattur).
RTO officials said the introduction of front and rear cameras in all school vehicles from this academic year onwards was a major initiative in ensuring safety of students, especially from being runover. Along with this, the transport officials check 21 other safety parameters including the height of the footboard, strength of the floor, fire extinguisher, first aid kit, speed governor, driver’s cabin, seats, bag racks, windows, window grill and emergency exits. Transport officials will paste ‘OK’ stickers on vehicles that pass the inspection The deadline for unfit vehicles to get clearance is on or before May 31.
The newly formed Ranipet district has two RTOs— Ranipet and Arakkonam. Major towns like Arcot, Walajah, Sholinghur and Thimiri come under the Ranipet RTO, whereas the Arakkonam RTO has the Arakkonam and Nemili towns. Ranipet district Collector S. Valarmathi will oversee the vehicle inspections in the district on May 14.
Officials said the tightening of rules, especially for school vehicles, became a norm after the passage of the Tamil Nadu Motor Vehicles (Regulation and Control of School Buses) Special Rules, 2012, which mandates officials to inspect the school vehicles every year.
