The safety of children, especially in this ever increasing world of abductions and sex crimes, is paramount. So, an announcement that a private company will soon launch a school bus tracking system in Goa is good news indeed. Parents of children that take the school bus will surely breathe a sigh of relief.
Tata Teleservices is an internet and allied solutions company that provides services in different forms to quite a few companies in Goa, and of course, India and the world. They have, in the past, even worked with a Formula One team. So, they come with a good and extensive recommendation list. They have now worked out an enterprise system that will send an SMS to parents when the bus picks up their kids on both journeys to and from school.
For years now, the school bus has been a place where children have been somewhat exposed. While they are relatively safe at school, with a few serious exceptions like the unsolved Vasco case where a young girl was raped in the school toilet in 2013, school children could be harassed or molested in school buses, especially in Goa where most bus services provided to schools are outsourced.
In April 2015, based on orders by the High Court, the department of transport released guidelines for school buses and all other vehicles that ferry school children in Goa. The guidelines included rules that mandated a specific colour for vehicles, including a signboard to be displayed prominently, additional steps for the children to climb into the bus and provisions for school bags inside the vehicle, among other things.
Along with these rules, if schools can now provide SMS services that let parents know that their children have been picked up and are safe, it will add another dimension of safety for Goa’s younger generation. But first the Goa School Bus Rules have to be implemented for the SMS services to actually make sense. Then there’s another hurdle for schools in Goa. Programmes and solutions such as the one by Tata Teleservices don’t come cheap. The company will make presentations to school managements soon. Some of the bigger private schools may be able to afford it but smaller schools as well as those run by the Diocese and charitable institutions may find it difficult without external help. Putting the onus on parents by asking them to shell out a monthly fee will only serve to polarise them. While all parents would like every possible safety measure in place to ensure their children’s safety, the matter of whether all can afford them is another matter.
This means that with or without a monthly fee, the schools will have to find other ways to get these prices subsidised. Help from the government will mean a lengthy process of selection. This is an area though, that needs serious deliberation by authorities, so as to enable all schools that provide bus services to avail of these tech solutions.
All services that help protect the rights and lives of citizens must be considered. Those that do the same for children have to be implemented in some form or another. But, the aforementioned matter of financial viability only makes it attainable under specific circumstances. Solve all these issues and Goa’s children can ride the bus without any fear whatsoever.
