Ludhiana DC instructs school heads to follow ‘Safe Vahan’ norms

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, April 16

Taking cognisance of the recent accident at Mahendergarh, in which precious lives of schoolchildren were lost, Deputy Commissioner Sakshi Sawney held a meeting with school heads today at Guru Nanak Bhawan.

Instructions

• Vans should have a female caretaker for students
• There should be two drivers, if something happens to a driver, the students should be taken to some safe place by the other driver
• Vans should be parked on the school premises
• Students should be picked up from and dropped inside the school premises

The participants were given three major instructions — to comply with the Safe Vahan Scheme, to carry the name of the school in Punjabi on a board outside the school and to make the students aware of the process of voting using EVMs.

“At the meeting, focus was put on the implementation of the Safe Vahan Scheme. We were told to follow the norms, to check that school vans were not obsolete, that the school vehicles are parked on campus and that the students are picked up from and dropped on campus with care,” said a principal.

Over 1,000 school principals attended the meeting. Principal Jaswinder Sidhu from DAV School said the school should be responsible and ensure that the scheme is followed in letter and spirit. She added, on similar lines, the CBSE had also provided the schools with ‘Quality Assurance and Assessment Framework’, which the stakeholders such as principals and the administrative staff are bound to follow, and that the principals should meet the bus and van drivers to ensure the vehicles comply with the safety norms.

Deputy DEO Jaswinder Singh said the meeting was fruitful and that a majority of school principals agreed to follow the safety norms under the Safe Vahan Scheme.

Another principal said, “We have been told to carry the name of the school in Punjabi, in big letters, on a board outside the school. We will get this done right away. On the upcoming LS elections, those present were told to make the voters aware of the importance of voting and those who had not got their votes made, should get it done by the first week of May.”

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