The Eastern Cape MEC for Transport Thandiswa Marawu held a state of readiness press conference, to officially announce the re-introduction of the scholar transport programme under her department on Tuesday, 12 July 2011 in King Williams Town.
Having been halted earlier this year by the Department of Education, the service will resume operations on the first day of school next term with the mandate of the provincial Cabinet, which is to ensure that the poorest of the poor are prioritised with a particular focus on farm and rural schools with a budget of R206 million.
"As from 18 July 2011, we will service 56 461 learners from 666 schools, of which 443 are rural and 223 are farm schools and we are expecting 2 500 Proof of Deliveries (PoDs) per month accounting for over 7 500 routes, said MEC Marawu”.
This scholar transportation service will be active and scholars registered and approved for the service will be transported to and from their respective schools and in order to comply with the new system, scholars are urged bring some form of identification so that the driver can confirm that they indeed are registered, added Marawu.
The benefiting schools were identified by the Department of Education which is responsible for which scholars are registered for the programme and to have qualified, learners needed to travel more five than kilometres to school and had to have certain curriculum needs.
These criteria are aligned to the Draft National Scholar Transport Policy and this was taken into consideration in the identification of the routes that will now be serviced.
The department also said that all participating vehicles will have bumper stickers identifying them as scholar transport vehicles and that this week all these vehicles will be inspected by traffic officers in various districts to ensure that:
- the operators have current operating licences
- the drivers have public drivers permits
- vehicles have valid certificates of fitness
- operators have public passenger liability cover, which is very important.
To combat and avoid fraudulent claims the department will make use of redeployed employees to this new service which will be trained this week and Local Municipalities’ Community Development Workers, School Governing Bodies and Ward Councillors to properly monitor this service.
Should anyone have any questions they can please call the Scholar Transport System Helpline on 0800644644.
