Heads of schools and colleges across the district have been instructed to suspend students found travelling in the footboard of buses.
After four footboard travellers, all students, were killed in an accident in Chennai in 2012, the Madras High Court had formed a committee headed by a retired High Court judge, who recommended a list of punitive measures to be taken against erring students.
One of the recommendations said every school and college should immediately convene their Parent–Teachers’ Association meeting to discuss this issue and tell the students that they would be first placed under suspension if they were caught travelling on the footboard. On the second occasion, the mistaking students would be removed for the schools or colleges, the recommendation said.
Subsequently, a meeting was convened by the State government to discuss the recommendations and instructed the heads of the schools and colleges to enforce the High Court-appointed Committee’s recommendations after informing the parents through the Parents–Teachers’ Association meeting.
“As per the present arrangement in the district, parents and the officials from Departments of Police and Transport will be informed about the erring students and asked to take action against the students who dared to defy the dictum. While suspension will be the first action the erring student would face, dismissal from his school or college will be the subsequent measure to be taken,” said a senior official from the Department of School Education.
Though this instruction has already reached the heads of schools and colleges in the district, the number of students travelling on the footboard, especially girls, remains unchanged as no action is taken yet.
“Girl students of a college at Perumalpuram travel on the footboard everyday. Though the traffic police are deployed in and around Palayamkottai bus stand, none even ask them to get into the bus,” says a trader witnessing this problem every day from his shop at the Palayamkottai bus stand.
