The North West Department of Community Safety and Transport Management has begun the verification and inspection of process buses that will ferry learners (scholar transport) from January 2024 as part of completing the long and arduous process of contracting the learner transport operators. The department says this process is in part to ensure that the appointed contractors are complying with the specifications of the contract, including the roadworthiness of buses.
The inspection and verification process started from Monday, and ends on Thursday, December 14 at various centres across the province. The department has so far awarded scholar transport contracts to 447 operators that will use 769 buses to transport learners over 511 cumulative routes across the province. The verification process comes after an incident that happened in July this year where a five-year-old Grade R pupil Kgothatso Goralotse from Moeti Primary School was injured.
Goralotse sustained a broken arm and leg, and got a cut on her head after she fell from a moving bus that allegedly had loose windows and was overloaded in Huhudi, Vryburg, in the Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District. Furthermore, over 500 learners from the Phiri Secondary School who reside at the Tsetse and Mafole villages, Ventersdorp, in the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District, had to endure an eight kilometre walk to school in January this year due to the unavailability of a scholar transport bus.
The owner of the bus service said he was unable to ferry the learners because he has run out of diesel. He complained about late payment from the Department of Transport and said that was the reason for his failure to transport the learners. The department's MEC, Sello Lehari, has stressed that challenges experienced in the past should not recur in 2024. Some of the challenges experienced in the past, included overloading, unroadworthy buses, and the late arrival of learners as some operators had to transport learners to more than one school.
"We have had a lot of challenges, and this new contract should address the unroadworthy vehicles and operators that previously abandoned routes without informing the department, as well as the overload of learners. The department is committed to ensuring that learners are transported safely, reliably and in compliance with the law," said Lehari. The operators who will sign service-level agreements with the department will begin ferrying learners when schools reopen in mid-January 2024.
