Safety of school students: Malda police takes up plan to check speed limits of vehicles

malda: Keeping the safety of school children a priority, Malda district police have taken up a comprehensive plan to control the speed limit in school buses by installing speed governors in the vehicles.

The police have also stressed upon the installation of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) in school vehicles to locate their position at any given point in time.

Dr Pradeep Kumar Yadav, Superintendent of Police Malda, said: “We are taking various steps to ensure the safety of school children. We held an eye check-up camp for bus drivers recently. New traffic signals are being installed in strategic points. Installation of GPS and speed governors in the vehicles is mandatory. Even the police offer hot water to the drivers on highways at night to ensure that they don’t doze off.”

Speed governors are devices that prevent vehicles from over-speeding. With the installation of this device, vehicles cannot cross the sixty kilometres per hour mark and if one tries to cross the limit, the engine turns off automatically. Recently a bus was slapped with a fine of Rs 10,000 for disconnecting the speed governor machine in the vehicle.

In the eye and health check-up camp held by the district police on Sunday, at the traffic inspector’s office in the Police Club near the Foara More, at least 152 drivers, including 56 school bus drivers, participated. A total of seven doctors checked their health parameters, including blood sugar levels and blood pressure.

The police are now sending letters to the schools to provide the details of their school bus drivers and assistants. The data, including names, addresses and cell numbers, will be registered with the police. Even the nodal teachers of the concerned schools in charge of the vehicles are being called to these meetings. With twenty schools at a time, the concerned police officers are having a meeting in phases to cover all the schools in the district.