Students of schools and colleges are being forced to travel on the rooftops of buses due to the unavailability of adequate transport facilities at educational institutions and the apathy of public transporters, who ignore them, saying they don’t pay fares. Though a few institutions have their own pick and drop facility for students but the vehicles have specific routes, therefore a large number of students coming from suburbs of the city to their schools and colleges have to face enormous problems besides misbehaviour of drivers and conductors. The students complained that majority of local transporters did not stop their vans even when they see students standing on the bus stops. Due to the absence of proper transport system, local transporters overload their vehicles forcing the students to travel on the roof-tops of the vans.
The parents of such students have expressed their inability to afford pick and drop service, therefore, their kids travel on local transport in order to reach their schools and colleges. Students waiting for bus at Ferozepur Road said that transporters avoid to pick them from stop and there was no option left for them but to travel on the roof-tops of the vehicles, which is extremely unsafe. Local transporters say that students do not pay fares so they were not responsible for their transportation. An employee of a private company said that the transport problem was not only faced by students but also by the general public, that is also a victim of this and is facing hardships due to the absence of proper transport system in the city.
It is important that education institutes provide adequate transport facilities to the students, hence facilitating them with everyday transportation. This would result in punctuality and the regularity of students for their respective institutes.