Strike sting for guardians

RANCHI: The one-day strike of school bus owners' association on Saturday caused inconvenience to guardians as the hapless ones had no option but to make alternative arrangements to reach kids safely to schools.
The decision of Federation of Private Schools in the capital to keep schools open despite strike of buses was criticized by guardians as they had made last-minute re-organization of transport in the wake of class-tests going on in most of the schools.
Ranchi principal J Mohanty said that the guardians responded to the appeal issued by the schools on Thursday and made private arrangements to drop and pick their wards from the schools. He said that the schools were helpless in providing any transport to students when the buses were on strike.
"Though we have our own buses but they too operate on a fixed schedule and route so using them as stop-gap arrangement would have affected the entire system," he said. Some of the schools issued SMS alerts informing guardians about schools remaining open and whether bus would be sent or not. "We tried to inform the guardians of those children who are ferried by the contract buses because normal bus service was provided on the routes where our own buses ply," said CJ Jacob, the principal of Oxford Public School. Anjali Rajgariah, mother of two studying in Tender Heart School, said that though there was confusion about the bus service they faced no difficulty because the bus came to the stoppage on time. "Some of the students in our neighbourhood studying in Bridgeford School returned because the buses did not come," she said, adding that the guardians were prepared to drop the kids because of ongoing tests. Vehemently criticizing the school management for troubling parents, Rakhi Kejriwal, mother of a student with Bridgeford School, said that the trouble was between bus operators and school management for which the students and guardians are being made sufferers. "If the bus did not come on Friday is the school going to deduct a day's bus fare from the transport fee of my ward?" she said, arguing that despite paying fees they have to face the crisis. Another guardian, Alok Sharma, complained that all the schools charge transport fees for 12 months whereas the bus owners complain of being paid only for 11.
"School is not a business house. If they are charging fee from us why can't they pay it to the bus owners and settle the dispute?" he said. School Bus Owners' Association president Krishna Mohan Singh expressed gratitude to their members for participating in the strike and said that they were planning to proceed on an indefinite strike after a week. "We are giving time to the school management to decide because in the light of increased rate of diesel it has become virtually impossible to operate on a meager contract amount," he said. Singh further stressed that the cost of insurance had also increased and the bus owners were not in a position to wait till the next academic session because of the monthly loss incurring to them.