School buses broached as smog solution

Owners urged to help reduce school time traffic

LAHORE:

The Lahore District Education Authority has advised the elite private schools to provide transport service to 60 per cent of their students and submit details of their available vehicles.

The authority urged the schools to purchase buses to facilitate their students and immediately solve the transport issue for all their branches.

It asked the owners of all private schools having branches across the city to facilitate their students with school buses. Representatives of around 30 schools attended a meeting convened by the district education authority to discuss the matter.

According to sources, problems of the private schools were also discussed during the meeting in addition to the transport issue.

An official of the authority said there were two reasons for convening the meeting: the hearing by the Lahore High Court regarding the transport facilities at the private schools and the aggravating problem of smog because of traffic density.

The official told The Express Tribune that the court had sought details about the current situation regarding the transport facilities at the private schools.

Read Soaring pollution in Lahore fills wards with sick children 

He said the prevailing high levels of smog and air pollution because of the large number of vehicles plying on the roads of Lahore during the opening and closing hours of the schools was also discussed with the owners of the institutions.

The All Pakistan Private Schools Management Association also participated in the meeting, in which the administrations were asked to submit data and details of their transport facilities.

The collection of the data will be completed in the coming week, the official said. The school owners were asked to purchase new buses, but they cited lack of resources required for the purpose and they had hired private transport services for the students.

"How can we purchase imported buses costing Rs40 million as suggested by the district education authority," said private school owners' association leader Kashif Adeeb Jawadani who had attended the meeting. He said the owners were paying taxes and bearing other expenses and it would be impossible for them in the prevailing circumstances to implement the instruction.

He said his association had earlier presented a suggestion to the authorities concerned to provide transport facility to students on the Orange Line train and metrobus services.

He said the large number of school students in the city could only be provided transport service by the government.

He said the city train and bus services were already incurring expenses, but offering concessional fares for students would help solve the transport issue.

Read more Smog: the new unfortunate reality of Lahore

He said the owners were also waiting for the government's response over a suggestion to hand over Speedo buses to schools to resolve the transport issue.

The Punjab government had instructed the owners of private schools two years ago to provide their students the bus facility. However, the instruction was yet to be implemented and thousands of private vehicles take to the roads daily to pick and drop the students. Several main roads of the city witness traffic jams in front of schools during the rush hours, aggravating air pollution.

Earlier this week, Lahore High Court’s (LHC) Justice Shahid Karim took a stern stance on environmental issues, imposing fines on both commercial and residential consumers for their alleged reckless use of water.

The fines amount to Rs20,000 for commercial and Rs10,000 for residential consumers. Justice Karim has directed a substantial fine of Rs1 million for factories still contributing to air pollution by emitting smoke.

The court emphasised that punitive measures were necessary to curb pollution and warns against spending public funds on artificial rain, insisting on concrete steps to address smog-related challenges.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2023.