Nellore: With just 10 days left for reopening of educational institutes, managements obtained fitness certificates (FCs) from the transport department for only 25 buses out of 1,342 school buses operating in SPSR Nellore district. To the surprise of tran-sport officials, schools have been ignoring the notices being served to them and appear to be overlooking the provision in the Motor Vehicle Act to prosecute the bus owner as well as the driver if the buses are put to use without fitness certificate.
In addition to this the transport authorities can also recommend for cancellation of recognition to the school or college concerned for FC violation. The institutes should strictly follow the directions of transport wing pertaining to emergency door, first aid box among others and also display the route map and details of the driver in the vehicle. They have to upload these details on the transport website too.
Expressing surprise over laxity of schools in securing the fitness certificates, Deputy Transport Commissioner N. Sivarama Prasad said that it is very difficult for them to inspect and issue fitness certificates 1,300 buses within next 10 days with available manpower even if they check 10 buses per head per day. He made it clear that they are going to take stringent action without any mercy on those operating school buses without FCs because they paid no heed to the notices from the department.
He said that they are also going to wield their whip against new vehicle owners who failed to register their vehicle even after deadline. According to Mr Prasad there are 12,300 unregistered new vehicles in the district and action plan is ready to conduct surprise checks with special teams to book cases in all the towns of SPSR Nellore district from the first week of June. The department can impose a fine of '5,000 to '10,000 against an unregistered new vehicle and the owner also can be jailed for a period of one year.
Meanwhile the transport wing has initiated measures to improve the image of the department in view of seizure of crores worth of property from senior most officers of the department during ACB raids last month. Among other initiatives, the officers imposed restrictions on the entry of middle men into the offices and installed CC cameras to keep a tab on their movements. Help desks have been established to assist the public coming to the office. Mr Sivarama Prasad has appealed the public coming to their office to contact him or the RTO or AO of transport office in case of any difficulty in carrying out their work.
