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This past week, the City of Johannesburg MMC for Public Safety Michael Sun and ward 70 councillor Caleb Finn joined Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) officers at Unified Primary School in Roodepoort, Region C to inspect scholar transport vehicles.
Four of these vehicles were subsequently impounded due to their unroadworthiness and dangerous conditions.
The JMPD found that these vehicles, which transport dozens of children every school day had shocking defects and array of safety contraventions. These ranged from missing wheel nuts, worn tyres, malfunctioning headlights and wipers blades, broken seats and doors, lack of safety belts to expired license disks which all posed potential danger which could result in accidents, serious injuries and even deaths.
This inspection formed part of the Department of Public Safety’s “Back to School Safety Campaign”, set to roll out to all seven regions in the City. It aims to ensure scholar transport compliance to road and safety regulations so that the safety of the young passengers as well as those of other motorists are well looked after. The campaign also aims to drive awareness to parents, schools and scholars on how to select reliable transport and operators that adhere to safety regulations.
“Safety of our children is non-negotiable, we can simply not allow fly-by-night operators to play with the precious lives of our children, we will to this end ensure that all impounded vehicles are only to be released once the owners have rectified and fixed up all the defects.” MMC Sun said.
