The Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) authorities suspended its special school bus service on the city’s Mirpur-Azimpur route for summer vacation in the city schools.
The state-run agency suspended the service last month when the vacation started in the public schools in the capital on May 13.
However, the English medium schools, mostly in the Dhanmondi area, will be open at the time, but the BRTC still discontinued the bus service.
Many of the schools on vacation have resumed classes this week, but the BRTC has not resumed the bus service yet, forcing the school-goers and their guardians to travel on other modes of transport.
Although BRTC introduced the special school bus service in January 2011 with 14 buses, only four or five of those buses remain in service.
Despite directives from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Communications Minister Obaidul Quader to increase the number of buses under the service, the BRTC reduced the number without any specific reasons.
Shamima Akter, guardian of a student at the Azimpur branch of Viquarunnisa Noon School and a Mirpur resident, said: “I waited for the bus at Mirpur 12, but it did not come. I do not see any of those buses on the street either.
“Earlier, we saw only a limited number of these buses on the streets since the service started in 2011. We urged the authorities concerned to increase the number of school buses, but it is now trying to stop the service altogether,” she said.
Seeking anonymity, a BRTC official said the number of buses in the special school service were reduced because the authorities tried to cover the shortage of staff buses for public service employees as well as its own.
Md Rafiqul Islam Talukder, general manager (operation) at the BRTC, told the Dhaka Tribune: “We have not stopped the school bus service permanently. It is temporarily suspended due to the ongoing summer vacation in the schools.
“We will resume the service when the schools resume classes,” he added.
Earlier, Nikhil Ranjan Roy, director (admin and operation) at the BRTC, said: “The number of buses has been reduced in the service because of a lack of sufficient passengers due to the traffic congestion on the route. However, the service is still available.”
When the service was launched in 2011, the BRTC high officials said passenger sheds would be built with the help of Dhaka City Corporation at 33 stoppages on the route, and female guides would be trained to pick up and drop off the students.
Traffic police were also ordered to give priority to the buses to ensure that the students would reach their destination in time, while GPS technology was installed in each of the buses to help the guardians track their charges through text messages.
BRTC officials said the government had initially planned to introduce more BRTC school buses on other routes of the city, after evaluating the success of the service on the Mirpur-Azimpur route.