Schoolchildren's safety

A child's journey to school should never be a gamble. Yet in Pakistan, thousands of students travel every day in overcrowded vans, ageing Suzuki vehicles and rickshaws that are often poorly maintained and sometimes fitted with dangerously installed LPG cylinders. That this has been allowed to become routine is itself a serious failure of regulation.

The Lahore Traffic Police's decision to crack down on overloading and the use of LPG cylinders in school transport is therefore long overdue. The order that children must not be carried beyond a vehicle's capacity, that LPG cylinders be prohibited in vehicles transporting schoolchildren and that children not be seated in the front of rickshaws is basic safety enforcement. It should never have required a fresh campaign to establish these rules. Instead, small Suzuki vans are routinely packed with far more children than they were designed to carry. Children are squeezed into every available space, while schoolbags are sometimes hung from the sides of vehicles. The use of LPG adds another layer of danger. The problem is not LPG itself but the reckless manner in which cylinders are often installed, refilled, stored and maintained. Old cylinders and unauthorised refilling facilities create risks that are entirely preventable. Enforcement must also extend beyond school vans to the entire chain through which LPG is sold. Other provinces must now follow suit. Karachi, in particular, and other dense urban centres cannot afford to wait for another tragedy. They have a vast school-going population and a large informal transport network, making effective regulation even more important.

There is also a wider question of accountability. Parents are often blamed for choosing cheap or unsafe transport, but many have little choice. The answer cannot therefore be to tell parents to be more careful. It must be to ensure that every legally operating school vehicle is safe.