Government must prioritise safe transportation for pupils
PUPILS’ safety must be prioritised with thousands expected to go back to school, the IFP said in a statement yesterday.
The party called on parents to make use of safe vehicles for pupil transport. They must ensure the vehicles they intend to hire to transport their children were roadworthy and the drivers were qualified, it said.
First, they must request an updated vehicle roadworthy certificate, and a driving licence for the driver.
Requesting these documents will help in eradicating unnecessary road accidents.
Parents must also become ambassadors of road safety.
In rural areas, even minibuses are scarce and “malumes” (bakkie operators) must address the needs of commuters. These bakkies are similarly unregulated, profit-driven and sometimes unsafe. Like minibuses, they are used regularly by children to go to school.
Furthermore, it’s high time this government stops talking about pupil transport and actually implements it in areas where our children have to commute long distances to receive an education.
We are tired of seeing MECs delivering speeches full of empty promises whenever our young children perish on the roads.
For years now KZN MECs of education and transport have been talking of providing appropriate transport and outlawing the transportation of pupils on bakkies – but it still goes on and our children are dying.
The departments of Transport and Education have been passing the buck from one to the other with no resolution in sight.
The IFP calls on the KZN provincial government to stop investing money to organise funerals, and rather provide safe transport for our pupils.
It is a well-known fact that the government always complains about a lack of funds for pupil transport, but it has the money to organise mass funerals for those pupils who died while being transported on bakkies and unroadworthy vehicles. Thembini KaMadlopha-Mthethwa MPL IFP KZN Spokesperson on Education