School buses skirt safety, over 5k unfit

Hyderabad: Eight days into the new academic year, over 5,500 school buses out of the 22,000 registered with the Road Transport Authority (RTA) in the state are cruising without their fitness certificates. With authorities seizing 179 buses, including 70 in Ranga Reddy district, and launching investigations into irregularities, it seems schools have taken a lackadaisical approach to timely fitness checks“But there’s more to this story. Some schools are conveniently not updating their fitness certificates in time to avoid their yearly taxes. We have been nabbing these defaulters, by conducting thorough checks and ensuring that all commercial taxes are paid on time,” said a senior official. Meanwhile, experts questioned why RTA is limiting itself to random fitness checks and emphasized the need for the RTA to resume safety awareness drives. “Until the pandemic, RTA used to organise awareness drives. However, the officials have stopped them now. Such initiatives would assess the drivers' knowledge,” said Dayanand, general secretary of Telangana Auto and Motor Welfare Union.