Admn to extend school bus service to AIE centres

The Chandigarh Administration is all set to extend its bus service for government schools to all the Alternate Innovative Education (AIE) centres in the city. The service would be extended on a contract between the transport company as well the NGO concerned.

The Administration had recently launched the service for the students of government schools charging Rs 400 per month as the fare. There are a number of NGO-run AIE centres in the city. One of the difficulties that most of the NGO’s face is that students do not turn up at the centres because of the distance factor. Parents rue that they cannot shell out money to pay for the transportation of their students. The transporters will not charge any monthly fee per student but take a consolidated amount every month from an NGO.

Confirming Secretary State Transport Authority (STA) Vandana Disodia said,“The NGOs said students found centre very far off because of which parents even did not allow them. Now this option of having a bus is open to NGO’s and after negotiating with transporter,they can start the service for students.”

Meanwhile,the service has got a good response as far as the government schools are concerned. Though to begin with the service was started only at four schools but now with increase in demand the same would be extended to other government schools as well. The fare per month to be paid by government school students is considerable less than what the private school students pay.