A mother whose six-year-old daughter was involved in two minivan crashes this year has raised more than 500 signatures for a petition calling for safer school transport.
The petition calls for all school transport to have seat belts, for adult supervision on minivans or buses and for drivers to be vetted.
“All we are asking for is that our children are safe,” Laura Anderson said, adding that the petition would be handed to Education Minister Dolores Cristina.
She said that, together with other worried parents, she was collecting signatures from outside school gates, parks and recreational areas where families took their children. Already over 500 signatures were collected in this way.
A further 225 signatures were raised through an online petition (www.change.org/petitions - Ministry of Education Malta: Introduce and enforce adequate safety on all school transport in Malta). Ms Anderson pointed out that people living abroad could also sign the online petition. Ms Anderson, whose daughter, Lucy, attends a Pembroke government school, said she was kept in the dark when the child was involved in two separate minivan crashes. None of the accidents were serious. This pushed her into setting up a Facebook group calling for better regulation.
On seeing that nothing much had changed, she decided to raise a petition and go straight to the minister.
“At the moment, the law states that all school minivans need to have seat belts or lap belts but they don’t. We demand that this law is enforced,” the petition states.
“At the moment, the majority of the school minivans/buses do not have any adults on board to supervise the children who are as young as three. This means children do not wear their seat belts, they freely run around the bus, some children are bullied and, if anything serious happens, such as a crash, there is no one there to comfort or help the children or contact parents,” the petition reads.
An Education Ministry spokesman explained last month that minivans and buses used by state schools were being fitted with tracking devices to monitor their movements.
He said vehicles used for school transport must meet all vehicle safety rules, including seat belts, safety equipment and road worthiness provisions.
In May 2008, an EU directive on seat belt use in school transport came into force in Malta.
The directive obliges minibuses manufactured after 1997 to be fitted with seat belts. The spokesman pointed out that vehicles approved by Transport Malta were allowed to operate in schools even if they did not have seat belts.