What SEC must do for children’s safety Wednesday, 26 May 2010 04:51

The tragic death of four-year-old Sarah Gazdhar replays in every person’s mind, and surely will continue to weigh heavily on the community’s conscience for a long time to come. Not only was the child robbed of her life, her parents were robbed of their peace of mind. Surely, guilt and “what-ifs” are resonant in everyone’s mind --  from the school’s driver, administrators, teachers, to, of course, Sarah’s grief-stricken parents.  The Supreme Education Council (SEC) moved swiftly to call for an investigation into the girl’s death, and also about DPS-Modern Indian School.

Sarah’s story is the answer to all of the “what-ifs” that parents and conscientious community members have ever imagined. Let us discuss this issue honestly and earnestly for the sake of an innocent child’s life, and perhaps protect other families from suffering the same tortuous fate. What happened to Sarah is not just a warning against the negligence toward schoolchildren by this particular school but against the community at large, and authorities’ lack of regulations and enforcement. Children’s rights to safety, protection, and integrity are wildly distorted and clearly visible on Doha’s early morning, noon, and afternoon traffic to even the least astute observer. Safety is disregarded almost completely in some cases, where buses used for transporting children are overcrowded, poorly equipped with seatbelts, and well beyond their expiration dates. Children are usually not secured in their seats with seatbelts. Not only that but school children are hardly rarely seen even settled firmly on their seats; usually they are standing, leaning across chairs, and outside of windows. Imagine all of the potential threats to your children in those cases. Now double them – as you and every other driver on Doha’s streets has witnessed how fast buses drive and how sharply they turn. Are any of these buses stopped, or drivers reprimanded? Or does that only happen after investigating a child’s death?

What is more, the distraction on drivers through overcrowding, hyperactivity and other commotion is combined with road rage, poor driving skills, and ill performing vehicles. This does not excuse the drivers or the schools administration. Nor does this serve as a blaming mechanism for working parents that cannot afford to drive each of their children to school every day.

This is a plea to the SEC to join efforts with the Traffic and Patrol Department to provide children with as many safety measures as possible. From heightening measures for qualifying drivers and vehicles before allowing children to board them, to introducing mandatory regulations and proper training for school administrators, drivers, and children on transportation protocol. Drivers should perform a check-list before, during, and after boarding. Their vehicles should be equipped with a list of students’ names and drop-off points to be checked as children board and leave the bus or van.

Where appropriate, speakers should be affixed within large buses to call out children’s names at each appropriate stop. Drivers should never leave the bus, let alone the van, without checking it first, regardless of whether it is to go pray, eat, or pump gas into the vehicle. These requests are not impossible, nor are they novel, or anything beyond pure common sense.

Sarah is gone, so is her future, her parents’ hopes and dreams for her. Besides our sincere, heartfelt condolences, we have little to offer them as a community except our promise that this carelessness will never happen again.

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