The traffic police department of Gujarat has conducted a drive against overloaded vehicles carrying children to the school. The drive was against the vans, rickshaws and buses and as many as 31 vehicles were detained from different areas. The crackdown was done after three school children fell from an overloaded van in the Nikol area of Ahmedabad. To protest against the drive, the school vans and the auto-rickshaws went on a strike and as it entered its second day, the Vadodara Police took the onus of transporting the children to schools in their own vehicles.
The police department of Vadodara implemented as many as 46 police motorcycles, 21 PCR vans and 9 official police Bolero MUVs to transport the students to school. As per the official police department, the vehicles helped as many as 250 school children to reach various schools in the city. The images and videos of school children in uniform travelling in the official police vehicles have become viral.
Traffic ACP, Vadodara, AK Vanani said,
“Every vehicle carrying students has to follow certain safety norms, like not carrying more students than the actual capacity and overcrowding the van. We initiated a drive in Vadodara and the association called for a strike. But we understand that the schools have just reopened and it is not easy for every parent to drop their children to school, so we have devoted our morning hours to help such students so that they do not face any inconvenience and do not miss classes. We will continue to do so till the strike calls off,”
The accident that happened recently caused due to an overloaded school van. Reportedly, the van was carrying as many as 22 children at the time and the door could not be closed properly due to the extra number of children travelling in the van. At a turn, three children fell down and one of them sustained injuries too. Legally, a maximum number of 14 children are allowed to travel in a van while the number is fixed to six when it comes to an auto rickshaw. The vehicles that have been flouting the norms are getting seized in the joint drive by the traffic police and the RTO of the region.
The traffic police in India has never done anything like this before. It is quite a welcome move to ensure the safety of the students. The cops putting their official vehicles to ferry the children is something that is getting appreciated by everyone in the country. Even lady police officers are involved in ferrying the children to their respective schools. It is not known when the strikes will be called off but according to the Traffic ACP, Vadodara, the police will continue to offer help as long as it is required.
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