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Greetings for incoming minister for education
2008-02-11 08:47:37
By Editor
The question of school transportation in our urban centres—especially in Dar es Salaam—keeps cropping up year in year out.
The concern on the plight of school children who are being thrown off buses or prevented from boarding them has, until now, not led to the implementation of any tangible measures to solve the problem.
Recently, a pupil was pushed out of a moving commuter bus in the capital city allegedly by the bus conductor, only to have the little child crushed to death under a bus tyre.
There are numerous newspaper accounts which continue revealing the occurrence of other episodes on the harassment of pupils whenever they attempt to board daladalas during rush hours.
Many students report late to and from school because bus crews are unwilling to allow in a large number of school children who pay less than a quarter of the adult bus fare.
The daladala conductors say they are compelled to be harsh because they are constantly under pressure from bus operators to remit a fixed amount of the proceeds on daily basis.
Given this arrangement, those who stand to suffer are the children from low-income families, who form the greater percentage of the pupil population.
The challenges of school transportation have made many children suffer from loss of morals, truancy, under-performance and even unwanted pregnancies.
Given the situation, transport hassles are definitely a disincentive for study and commitment because of what students have to undergo on daily basis.
We should remember that this problem did not exist to such a degree when public transport was monopolized by the government.
When we adopted a liberal economy, the transport needs of school children were thrown overboard so that their needs could be catered for within the competitive trade atmosphere.
We forgot that even in developed countries, there are special programmes of providing state reimbursement incentives to local education authorities for school transport.
There are also set conditions governing school transport schemes.
All these moves are undertaken to ensure that the process of studying does not become cumbersome, so that children devote all their minds and energy in acquiring knowledge and excelling.
There are even societies which have designed free home to school transport schemes.
We have given the above examples to stress the fact that public mass transit is not really appropriate for ferrying our children to their study places.
The Ministry of Education some time last year revealed that it had designed a school transport scheme for Dar es Salaam that would take off early this year.
So far, we are yet to see the school travel scheme taking off or hearing updates on how far the authorities have gone in implementing the plan.
We refrain from succumbing to the temptation of experience, which has taught all and sundry that in Tanzania, once the authorities choose to keep mum on the developments of a publicized proposed pet project, then it means that the project has come to an end without taking off.
We are still resisting this temptation. Can the incoming minister for Education come to our rescue?
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