To ensure safety to schoolchildren travelling in school buses, the district administration, Regional Transport Office, police, revenue and education departments carried out a joint inspection for issuing Fitness Certificates (FC) for school buses for this academic year.
Led by Collector T. Munusamy, Additional Superintendent of Police Vandita Pandey, Joint Transport Commissioner Muruganandam, Chief Educational Officer Senthivel Murugan, RTO Natarajan and Motor Vehicle Inspector Viswanathan carried out the inspection here on Friday.
Collector said there were 360 school buses in the district and on the first day of the two-day inspection drive, 192 buses were inspected. After the inspection, the authorities refused the FCs to nine buses for defects in emergency exits, speed governors and other minor violations.
Schools which owned these buses were given seven days time to rectify the defects and obtain the FCs, he said. The buses were checked for various parameters such as height of footboard, driver cabin, bag racks, floorboards, window grills, emergency exits and first aid boxes, Mr. Natarajan said.
The authorities also ensured that the drivers, who were employed by the educational institutions, had a minimum of five years experience, he said, adding 168 more buses in Karaikudi region would be inspected on May 26.
The inspection of school buses and issuance of the FCs became mandatory every year after a six-year-old girl was run over by her school bus after she slipped through a hole on the floor of the vehicle in Chennai in July 2012. After the incident, the government issued the Tamil Nadu Educational Institutions Special Rules, 2012, laying down strict guidelines for issuing the FCs for vehicles transporting schoolchildren.
