The Delhi Transport Department really does not seem to be too perturbed about the safety of school children which is reflected by the fact that, while the number of incidents involving the use of unsafe vans ferrying school children have been continually increasing with some accidents even being fatal, the Transport Department has still not bothered to come out with any kind of effective and standardized safety norms for plying of such dangerous vehicles on the roads, putting at peril the lives of thousands of children everyday.

This fact was once again brought to the fore by this Monday's accident at Kehsavpuram in North-West Delhi, where an unlicensed van ferrying school children was involved in a gruesome accident leading to the death of a child and severe injuries to some others. Most of these vans do not have any license or qualify under any safety norms and are not fit to ply on the roads and ferry children even under the present outdated Motor Vehicles Act, but the Transport Department continues to look the other way giving enough indications of corruption playing a big role in the whole game.

All these vans are fitted with CNG and LPG kits that have not passed the safety standards test but are all retrofitted second hand kits and hence extremely unsafe. The situation is so bad that it wouldn’t come as a surprise if there were to be a repeat of the incident at Wazirabad where 30 children lost their lives after their school bus fell into the Yamuna in 1997.

What is even worse is that despite repeated incidents involving school children and these illegal vans on the city roads, the Government is yet to wake up from its slumber and put in place a policy governing the plying of such vehicles especially those ferrying these children. In fact it has been almost two years since the decision was taken to put in place a policy governing the running of these vans but nothing has happened so far.

According to officials, while a number of meetings have been held during the last two years to finalize the norms for plying of such vehicles, things have still remained inconclusive due to the lack of interest on the part of both, the political leadership as well as the administrative set-up.

It is extremely unfortunate that the Department has failed to finalize a policy despite the passage of two years showing how concerned the Government is about the welfare of the school students. And equally to be blamed for this mess is the traffic police and the Education Department which are not coming down heavily on the schools for allowing children to be transported in such an unsafe manner.