Only a handful of schools have painted buses used to ferry students — the ones registered in schools’ names and the hired ones — yellow and have the text ‘School Bus’ written on them, despite a decision among private academic institutions, guardians and Traffic Police to do all this by June 15.

The June 7 meeting of the Private and Boarding Schools’ Organisation Nepal (PABSON), National Private and Boarding School Association of Nepal (N-PABSAN), Higher Secondary Schools Association of Nepal (HISSAN), Guardians Association of Nepal (GAN) and the Metropolitan Traffic Police Division (MTPD) had decided to paint the buses registered under the schools yellow and sport the flex with the text ‘School Bus’ on the hired buses. The meeting had also set code of conduct and dress code for school bus drivers and their helpers, and number of students to be accommodated in rows of seats, among others.

This came a year after the government declared ‘Schools as a Zone of Peace’ directing schools to paint their buses yellow so as to ensure their free movement even during strikes and other protests.

GAN president Suprabhat Bhandari conceded that the decisions reached at the June 7 meeting remain largely unimplemented.

He said, “Only a few schools have flex on buses hired to ferrry students to school and back home.” “It seems that the schools have not been informed.” He said stakeholders will talk to the schools concerned on this matter in the near future. While PABSON president Babu Ram Pokharel said there is no hard and fast rule to paint school buses yellow by June 15 because it is not possible to paint the school buses within such a short period, pointing that around 1,000 school buses of private schools and Plus-Two colleges ply in the Kathmandu Valley. He said, “We have already issued circulars to this effect to affiliate schools. They will implement the decisions gradually.”

source: The Himalayan Times,17 June 2012