ABU DHABI — The Abu Dhabi Education Zone (ADEZ) yesterday issued a circular, making it clear to private schools in the capital that health and safety of students are the responsibility of school administrations, a top official said.
Mohammad Salim Al Dhahiri, Director of ADEZ, told Khaleej Times that the private schools must abide by the safety norms in the buses.
The issuance of the circular comes after the incident in which a four-year-old child, Aathish Sreedharan, died in a school bus on Thursday last. He was a KG-I student at Maryland Kindergarten school in the capital. The driver of the bus apparently forgot to drop the child, who was ill, and the child was left locked in the bus. It may be noted that ADEZ had issued the last circular, No 654, in October 23, 2007, which made it mandatory for schools to provide supervisors on the school buses and affirmed that all students must be dropped ‘safely’ near their homes.
“All schools should send the drivers and bus supervisors to attend workshops at the Emirates Transport Company where they’ll receive training on this aspect (of safely transporting students),” noted said Al Dhahiri.
Meanwhile, ADEZ is investigating into the incident.
“We’ll follow the case in addition to tightening inspections of the schools in the coming days. The monitoring will be followed by slapping of penalties on the erring schools, which might lose their licences as well,” warned Al Dhahiri.
By Ahmed Abdul Aziz and Adel Arafah (Our staff reporters)