ABU DHABI - Surveillance cameras will be installed in school buses of eight government schools in the emirate as part of a pilot project being implemented by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) for this academic year.
According to Khaled Al Ansari, Infrastructure and Facilities Division Manager at the ADEC, the camera installations will be carried out during the first semester breaks from December 18.
The ADEC is yet to select the schools for the project but said in a statement that three to four buses in each school will have cameras.
“ADEC will observe how parents and students are reacting to the new initiative, and point out the limitations encountered during that period, if any. If the project proves successful, surveillance cameras will be diversified to all public school buses across the emirate,” stated Al Ansari.
The council’s decision to instal surveillance cameras was part of the efforts to ensure the safety and security of children while in school buses.
In the past, separate cases across the UAE were reported about young girls who were subjected to abuse and molestation by unscrupulous school bus drivers and attendants.
In 2006, a brawl inside a school bus resulted in the stabbing of a teenage boy by a fellow senior student in Dubai, while in 2009 in Abu Dhabi, a four-year old girl was accidentally left inside a school bus under extreme heat during the summer resulting in her death.
Before the start of the new academic year, the ADEC had announced its plans to instal surveillance cameras in school buses, and to possibly adopt a SMS notification system to inform parents that their children are on their way home.
The ADEC said that the comprehensive study on the new school transportation requirements was carried out by the ADEC in partnership with the Emirates Transport.
Before classes started in September in Dubai, school transportation providers have refurbished their school buses with safety features in line with the Roads and Transports Authority (RTA) regulations issued earlier this year. These include equipping over 550 School Transport Services (STS) buses with CCTV cameras.
Smaller buses were fitted with two cameras onboard, while larger buses have three cameras, which can record during the night using a special digital recording device.
Although cameras are optional for school buses, their installation brought a sense of relief to both school authorities and parents.
Some schools, like the Dubai Modern High School, took the step further with a bus attendance system with the use of identity cards with unique barcodes. When boarding the bus, students simply scan the barcode on a special reader which logs their entry into the central monitoring system. Same procedure is applied when they get off the school bus.
As an added security measure, a bus attendant manually registers the student in a logbook when he or she enters and disembarks.
Olivia Olarte