On the International Children's Day this year, we had to front-page a heartrending news item about a schoolgirl's tragic death due to criminal negligence––criminal negligence, we repeat––on the part of a school bus crew. Dilhani Karunaratne (12) slipped through a broken plank on the rickety floorboard of her school bus and died on Tuesday morning about two kilometres away from her home.

Dilhani's fatal fall could have been avoided but for the callousness of the bus crew who had covered a gaping hole on the floorboard with a loose plank hidden under a carpet, which gave way when she stepped on it. Like Dilhani's bus, most of the vehicles transporting school children are veritable death traps. They are in a state of disrepair. They are unfit to ply on public roads let alone transport precious children. Some of them look like mobile gas chambers; children crammed into them without proper ventilation have to inhale all the vehicular emissions.

We have expended reams of newsprint and barrels of ink all these years in a bid to jolt the transport authorities into taking note of the plight of the hapless school children who have become captives of the School Vehicle Mafia. As is the way with this country, nobody cares until disaster strikes. At long last Transport Minister Dallas Alahapperuma has promised stern action against errant school vehicle operators.

Measures to regulate the school transport system are long overdue. It is high time school vehicles were tested for fitness and their crews disciplined to ensure the safety of children. The Supreme Court has ordered that private bus crews be put in uniforms. A similar scheme is needed for school vehicles as well.

Cattle in this country, as we have pointed out in these columns umpteen times, have better rights than children where transportation is concerned. The police nab cattle transporters and haul them up before court for overloading and ill-treating the bovine. Good judges mete out the maximum possible punishment to the savage bipeds harming innocent quadrupeds. But, children continue to suffer at the hands of callous van operators. Has any driver ever been nabbed and punished for transporting children in overcrowded school vans without ventilation? Never!

Children are rightly called the future of a nation. Is this the way we treat 'our future'?

Some children have to spend two or three hours in school vans to travel several kilometres as those vehicles go in circuitous routes so as to maximize their profits. The present-day children are often accused of their aggressive behaviour, which is attributed to several factors including their exposure to violence on TV. Does the torture they are made to undergo in school vehicles besides heavy school bags they carry and an overdose of private tuition have to do with their behaviour?

There has been reported a high incidence of diabetes and gastritis among school children––something never heard of in the good old days. It is time a study was commissioned to find whether the stress of children who travel for a long time on empty stomachs for want of proper transport is also a contributory factor.

Children are voiceless and parents helpless before the omnipotent school vehicle Mafia. Children are too scared to complain of their difficulties and their parents too timid to confront the arrogant drivers, as they are without any other mode of transport. So, both parents and children suffer in silence.

School vehicle operators also act like a bunch of extortionists. In addition to exorbitant fares they charge, they have to be paid even during school vacations! Where else on earth does this kind of daylight robbery happen? Fares are also jacked up according to operators' whims and fancies and parents have no choice but to grin and bear it.

Whom can people turn to?

The phenomenal growth of school vehicles is an indictment on both the State transport system and the education system. When a child is admitted to school, parents have to take great pains to prove that they live within the stipulated radius from the school of their choice. They have to produce documents of all sorts from water bills to electoral lists to substantiate their claims. School authorities also conduct checks to ensure that no bogus documents have been furnished.

But, there are thousands of vehicles transporting children to popular schools from faraway places. A school principal, asked that question during a TV interview once, tried to hoodwink the public by claiming that the students travelling in school vans could be the children admitted under different categories created for the offspring of old girls and old boys etc.! Such principals capable of lying through their teeth are of the ilk of Sakvithi the teacher turned con man on the run, having cheated thousands of people.

The rise in the number of private school vehicles speaks volumes for the failure of the SLTB to cater to the increasing demand for public transport. School transport is an area where the SLTB can expand its operations and mint money while bringing relief to the harried public.

The SLTB provides a heavily subsidised school transport service for the benefit of school goers. Besides this service which is tantamount to a huge investment in social welfare, the SLTB should explore the possibility of starting a school van service with a reasonable fare structure to compete with the private van operators fleecing parents. The SLTB despite its financial woes and administrative ills remains a people friendly service. We believe Minister Alahapperuma is capable of out-of-the-box thinking and tapping the full potential of the SLTB for the benefit of school children and their parents.