The special helplines recently launched by the Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) and the police are yet to be effectively used by students to report complaints related to the discrimination on the part of bus crew towards concession ticket holders. Even after the launch of the 14 district-level helplines, students have been found queuing up in bus stands for their turn to enter the bus.
Officials assigned to respond to the helpline calls said there were only less than 10 calls across the State related to such grievances despite suspected violations on the part of the bus crew. They also said that inspection was under way to check such incidents in bus stands and other halting points.
The helplines were launched following the intervention of the Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, noticing students’ struggle to board private buses. The numbers had been widely circulated through the social media pages of the police and the MVD. Apart from government departments, a lot of parents and students had tried their level best to popularise the helplines.
An MVD Inspector said Regional Transport Officers were directly monitoring the complaints on the helplines. The numbers could be used as an easy option to report grievances along with videos, photos or voice records of the bus or the misbehaving bus crew, he pointed out.
On the other hand, the district-level travel facilitation committees for students are inactive and no special meetings have been held to discuss the grievances of students. Issues such as the stoppage of some of rural services to distant locations and the reluctance to stop buses at the newly sanctioned stops were not taken up by the committee.
Similarly, no mainstream student organisation has come forward to raise students’ grievances before the district administration or the district-level student travel facilitation committees. Though there were calls to hold a meeting of bus operators in the presence of student organisation leaders and the school authorities, it failed to take off, lacking any official communication on the part of the district administration.
