Several school bus owners have started sprucing up their vehicles and clearing their unpaid taxes and insurance premiums after some schools in the city requested them to resume services.
Most of these institutions don’t own their own fleet of buses and depend on the school bus operators for ferrying their students.
Several school bus owners said around 50 per cent of their total fleet of buses will start rolling out from Monday to ferry students to schools, an exercise that was on hold for nearly two years since the pandemic-induced closure of schools and colleges.
The Bengal government has allowed in-person classes for students from Classes VIII to XII beginning February 3.
The Telegraph had earlier reported how much of a worry transport was for parents.
Many of them started sending applications to heads of several schools urging them to resume bus services.
The applications have come both from parents of students who had not enrolled for bus services in the pre-
pandemic times as well as those who had withdrawn their children’s names from bus services over the past two years, when the campuses were shut.
“Many schools including the South Point, Sri Sri Academy, Hariyana Vidya Mandir, all the branches of Delhi Public School and St John’s Diocesan have urged us to resume operations for their students,” said Himadri Ganguly of the West Bengal Contract Carriage Owners and Operators Association.
“Most of these institutions have requested the school bus operators to start operations first before discussions on whether fares could be revis-ed or not are held,” Ganguly said.
There are around 4,000 school bus operators in Kolkat and its adjoining areas who carry students to different schools that have outsourced this service to contractors or agencies.
A small fraction of schools still run their own buses to ferry students.
Schools were closed in March 2020 as a precaution against Covid.
After remaining shut for almost 20 months, schools across Bengal had opened their gates for students of Classes IX to XII in November only to close down again from January 3, plunging a majority of the bus owners into a chasm of unprecedented economic crisis.
Several bus owners decided to sell off their vehicles as scrap while a few others chose to ground their buses for good and switch trades.
Some of the bus owners rued that the burden of clearing all taxes was too heavy for them. There has been little or no income in the last two years and most of the staff had to be paid from the bank reserves.
“The premium for vehicle insurance varies between Rs 50,000-60,000. The permit fee is Rs 12,000. Most of us
have been borrowing money so we can start operations from Monday,” said Rajiv Banerjee, who owns four school buses.
“My buses are relatively new and I wouldn’t want to sell them off as scrap,” Banerjee said.
Many schools engage bus owners to run a pool of buses for them. These owners have to organise 20 to 40
buses depending on the requirement. The schools collect transportation fees from guardians and pay a monthly amount to the operators.
The bus operators pay monthly salaries to their staff.
The contract between a particular operator and a school would be for a length of time varying between three and five years.
Results announced for IIHM’s International Young Chef Olympiad 2022
A global culinary battle of budding chefs from 45 countries and held in the virtual mode came to a close on Saturday.
The eighth edition of the International Young Chef Olympiad 2022, organised by the International Hospitality Council, London, in association with the International Institute of Hotel Management (IIHM), had started on January 31. The results were announced on Saturday. Matteo Cignetti from Italy won gold in the competition.
“This was the most inspirational Young Chef Olympiad we ever had. We were able to pull it off despite all the challenges thrown at us by the pandemic,” said Suborno Bose, CEO of the International Hospitality Council and chairman of IIHM.