Surge in school bus crashes creates worries for parents

Dar es Salaam. The recent accident that involved two school buses in Mwanza city causing death of one driver, leaving ten pupils with injuries, has reignited a debate over safety of school buses in the country.

This comes just 15 months after the country mourned death of 30 pupils of the Arusha based Lucky Vicent English medium primary school who died after the vehicle they were travelling in swerved off the road and plunged into a gorge at Rhotia Hills, a few kilometres from Karatu town.

An investigation carried out by The Citizen on Saturday in Dar es Salaam city, among others, established that still little attention is being paid to the safety of students and pupils regarding their transport system to and from their schools.

Some of parents, who talked to this paper apart from sharing different opinions, said more could be done to improve safety of children when they are on motor vehicles away from home.

“In a period of one year, we have heard two accidents that involved school buses... this shows that there might be a weakness somewhere among actors and regulators. Not all vehicles are entitled to be used as school buses,” Mr Damian Sylvester one of the city residents told this paper recently.

He placed the blame on the Surface and Marine Transport Regularity Authority (Sumatra), saying it is failing to implement the law.

However, the regulator, Sumatra says in order for a bus to be permitted to operate as school bus it must meet all the requirements for road safety.

The bus must be registered, undergo regular inspection by the vehicle inspector and the driver must have a license that allows him to transport passengers.

“The bus shall not be overloaded and throughout the trip the students must be seated and more over they are supposed to meet other licensing conditions of technical standards as issued by Sumatra and the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS),” the authority’s spokesperson, Mr Salum Pazi said.

The Surface and Marine Transport Regularity Authority considers a Passenger Service Vehicle (PSV) as a vehicle constructed or adopted solely for carriage of more than seven persons and the driver.

The definition also applies to all vehicles which require license from Sumatra for public transportation or tour operations business.

This, according to him, is among measures that are being taken to control and regulate transport services that are offered by school buses in the country.

On the issuance of licenses, the law requires Sumatra to issue a road service license to an owner of a PSV, which is not more than five years old from the date of manufacture.

“Previously we were demanding that the driver must have the employment contract but this mandate was shifted to labour unit at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO),” said the spokesperson.

And, in case of breach of road safety regulations, the spokesperson said offenders would be punished under the law executed by the Traffic Division of the Tanzania Police Force (TPF).

After the accident of Lucky Vincent English medium school, the police took various measures, including arresting the bus owner, Mr Innocent Mushi, and the school’s headmaster, Mr Vincent Longino Nkana who were later taken to court to answer charges of transporting schoolchildren without a permit.

Mr Mushi was accused of running the service without having a valid permit issued by the Transport Licensing Board (TLB); failing to enter into a formal contract with the driver, Mr Dismas Joseph Gasper, who died in the accident.

Also, he was accused of directing the driver to carry more passengers than the actual capacity of the bus.

Mr Nkana for his part was accused for authorising transportation of the pupils in the overloaded school bus which is against the 2015Traffic Act.

Inspect the standard and roadworthiness of school buses should be done regularly, not just after an accident,” says Mr Sylvester.

Parents’ views

Speaking on different occasions, parents with children who are studying in schools that offer transport had different views.

A resident of the Msasani area of Dar es Salaam, Ms Betty Malila, is the mother of a four-year old girl who is a nursery school pupil in Masaki.

Commenting on the matter, she said she was confident that the school bus that transports her child to and from school meets all the required standards.

She also said that “the school bus driver is always smartly-dressed, charming and friendly to all the children” – and has always been like that since she knew him in January this year.

As a parent, she always asks for feedback from her daughter on how the driver and crew treat then on the way to school and back.

“The children say they are happy with him to the extent of addressing him as their ‘uncle.’ This is one of the issues I considered before enrolling my child at the nursery school,” she told The Citizen on Saturday.

For her, the safety of the children matters a lot, saying she wouldn’t like to undergo the experience of what happened in Arusha and Mwanza regions.

But for Ms Julieth Patrick, a mother of three children, the important thing is to see her children being safely driven to school and back home

All she does is to pay the school bus transport charges to have her twin daughters go to school and return home after classes as per the schedule.

Her children are in Standard One at one of the English medium schools in the Tabata area of Ilala Municipality on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam city.

“I trust the school to take good care regarding the transportation of our children for which we pay well. Thank God they are doing exactly that…,” she said.

According to her, the children are picked up for school at 6.30AM, and are brought back at around 16.30PM.

But, not all pupils go to school using school buses. Some parents hire ‘Bodaboda’ transport for that: motorbikes that can be hired to provide passenger services.

It is evident that Bodabodas come in useful in moving people in traffic-congested urban centres like Dar es Salaam where everyone wants to get to their destination in time.

But some of the Bodaboda operators ferry more than one passenger at a time in what is known as ‘Mshikaki’ –sometimes doing so without the passengers wearing steel helmets.

‘Mshkaki’ is ki-Swahili for kebab skewers.

“Students have to be at school on time, and I’m contracted to my neighbour to take his two children to school and back,” says Mr Abdul Kitoo, a Bodaboda motorcyclist in the Tungi area of Kigamboni Municipality in Dar es Salaam.

The motorcyclist says he is paid Sh1,500 daily to ferry the children to school and back, which is located 5 Kilometres from their home.

This usually applies to parents who have registered their children in schools that are hard to reach by public transport, and for schools that have no school buses of their own.

“I don’t see the risk, these Bodabodas have won my trust, so I see nothing bad happening to my children, and I always remind the Bodaboda operator to transport them safely,” says Mr Zebedayo Kungare who lives in Kigamboni District, Dar es Salaam Region.

On the other hand, a city resident, Mr Lazaro Kaisye, told The Citizen on Saturday that, while he agrees that children need vehicular transport to far-off schools and back, he nonetheless says of Bodabodas that they “indeed are a means of transport; but are they authorised by the relevant institutions to carry pupils? It is too dangerous.”

The chief executive officer of the Consortium for Independent Education Provides in sub-Sahara Africa (CIEPs-SA), Benjamin Nkonya, said the consortium invariably involves parents in setting up better system for logistics of pupils.

Noting that this is the best solution as parents participate in deciding what kind of vehicle should be used to transport c their children – Mr Nkonya said: “This has been debated a lot, and we have even sent proposals to the Regional Commissioner for it to be formalised. Parents have to play a role in deciding what type of vehicles should be used to transport schoolchildren.”

Nkonya – who once upon a time worked for the Tanzania Association of Managers and Owners of Non-Government Schools and Colleges (Tamongsco) as secretary general – was of the view that the safety of school children should be in the hands of parents, the government and the schools involved.