Tarun Karthick
Campbell Bay, 16 November 2021
Nearly 75 school students are pushed into a single STS Bus every day at Campbell Bay and are transported like goods to their destination at Rajiv Nagar, a few kilometres away from Low Point, where these students queue up for the painful ride.
The old bus of the State Transport Service is overloaded every day during its trip to Rajiv Nagar for the school students to reach their homes. Instead of providing additional busses to accommodate a large number of students, the State Transport Service officials prefer to load all students into a single bus.
This practice by the officials of the State Transport Service is very dangerous as they are endangering the lives of these students. The bus used by the State Transport Department during this overloaded trip is also old and if by chance anything goes wrong the result will be disastrous.
Rajiv Nagar is located at a higher elevation and the bus has to navigate through steep 40 degree+ inclination to reach the destination and the risk of accidents in such places on overloaded vehicles are very high.
While the Administration is focusing on modernising the transportation facilities at Port Blair and suburbs, it should also focus on improving rural transportation.
The residents of Rajiv Nagar have also been demanding additional busses during the morning and afternoon for the convenience of the school students, but according to them, STS prefers to endanger the lives of their children over providing an additional bus trip.
Nicobar Times spoke to some staff members of State Transport Department informally and they informed that the problem is a shortage of buses with the local unit of STS Campbell Bay and informed that they are waiting for the two new busses to arrive which is stuck at Port Blair because of some transportation issue.
The reality is that a little more effort by the staff of the STS Department can easily make the journey of the students less dangerous and comfortable. Even if the local unit of the STS has a shortage of buses, only one bus can be used for two or more trips to transport the school students to Rajiv Nagar.
Rajiv Nagar is a short distance from Low Point and one bus can easily undertake two trips in a short span of less than 30 minutes.
Mr. Venkat Rao, Ex-Up Pramukh, Panchayat Samiti, Campbell Bay informed Nicobar Times that he has personally on several occasions requested the authorities of STS to deploy additional buses on Rajiv Nagar route during morning and afternoon hours for school students, but the officials are adamant on transporting students using a single bus trip.
The senior authorities of the State Transport Service must take note of the issue and find solutions to avoid any unfortunate incident.