Staff Reporter

Shillong, July 28: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma today said it takes time for parents to be comfortable to send their children to schools by using the buses.

“It is a new process and they are used to dropping a child on their own. They need to see whether these buses are safe. I am sure once the comfort comes in and parents feel it is safe to send their children, I am sure more and more people will take this (school buses). Therefore, we have to give them time,” Sangma told reporters.

According to him, no parent would want to take any chance when it comes to the safety of their children.

On July 24, the Meghalaya High Court in its order had informed that the the petitioner Philip Khrawbok Shati has submitted that though the government has invested in buses with a lot of fanfare for school children to be ferried by them, the government has not taken steps to assure parents of the security of their wards.

As a consequence, according to the petitioner, there is lukewarm response from parents and guardians in such regard. The petitioner suggested that government representatives should visit individual schools and request for meeting the parents to make them aware and assure them of the safety of their wards, if they travel to school and back in government buses.

An App had been prepared by the government as recorded in one of the previous orders, but the main issue appears to be as to the reliability of both the driver and helper or helpers in every bus and how the children are going to be protected by such persons.

Though the school issue is one of the several in the context of the traffic congestion in this city , at least, if half the number of parents who use cars to ferry their children to and from school resort to the public mode of service as introduced by the government, traffic would have been substantially eased.