Public service vehicles (PSVs) won’t have to worry about a Government ban on students – at least for the moment.
Minister of Education Ronald Jones said yesterday Government would meet “early next week” with the Association of Public Transport Operators (APTO) to discuss PSVs continuing role in transporting the estimated 50 000 students.
The talks would be “in relation to their support, their compliance, in moving students quickly to our schools . . . with the right safety precautions”, Jones told reporters during a tour of four primary schools and a nursery school.
Those visited were: Eden Lodge Nursery, Deacons Primary, St Stephen’s Primary, Sharon Primary and Hillaby/Turner’s Hall Primary to assess their readiness for the start of the new school term next month.
Late last year, Jones had warned of a possible ban following complaints from parents and commuters about poor behaviour by students and PSV crews.
He indicated then that Government was reluctant to go the banning route but would take it if there were not better student conduct on the privately-owned vehicles.
“My appeal to the students of Barbados would be that, yes, right now you can use the ZR and the minibus or any form of public transport to get to your school but where you lag and get involved in indiscipline and violence, where you listen to loud music that disrupts your learning . . . then we will have to take action,” Jones was quoted as saying last year.
Yesterday, he conceded that the state-run Barbados Transport Board was “not fully able as yet to satisfy the movement of 50 000 or so students to our schools”.
However, Jones felt the island had moved to the stage “where we are asking for compliance, good behaviour, decorum, adults taking charge . . . of the younger ones” on both Transport
Board and PSV vehicles.Jones said Government would ask people who transported students to “give us a calming environment”.
Noting complaints of booming music on the PSVs, he said: “Students that are heads up in the sky, (that suffer) the beating music in their eardrums, all kinds of behaviour, cannot settle down to study in that morning part, in those three hours between nine (o’clock) and 12.”
Jones said Government was “having conversations” with all partners in the education sector to improve conditions “but there also must be an appeal to students”.
“There have been some students who are lagging, who only rush to get aboard a bus when they see either a policeman or one of our school attendance officers.
“They might not want to be there. If they don’t want to be there, tell us why they don’t want to be there and we will create the environment so that they will want to be there at school.”
