The Students Cry over Transportation
The reopening of schools this academic year has seen school goers in the Eastern Part of the city cry over the way and manner transportation in the east end of Freetown operates in the morning hours; leaving the students to groan over the situation even though school has not got into full swing yet.
Poda poda drivers that ply routes in that part of the city do not seek the interest of students as demanded by the Sierra Leone Drivers and Transport Owners Association. School pupils are wary over the fact that the drivers don’t go according to the dictates of their destination board as they are the habit of dropping passengers half through their journeys.
The Sierra Leone Drivers Union in consonance with the Sierra Leone Police provided destination boards for commercial poda podas in Freetown with instructions that the drivers and passengers as well, are reminded of the fact that they go according to the route dictated by board assigned to them.
Sierra Express can authoritatively say that drivers using mini vans to convey people from the east end of the city stop at Bombay, Patton Street, and sometimes Up-gun roundabout which is a great injustice to passengers and an outright disregard for the law.
To school pupils in the east of Freetown, transportation is drudgery as they would have to get up as early as five o’clock in the morning and would have to battle with workers struggling to reach town before the hassle start at 7am. Whilst we would think that the problem of transportation does not particularly lie on drivers; it also true that the attitude of drives plying the east end of the city contributes to complicating the problem.
Government must also be pushed to see this problem as a need; for it concerns the welfare of the vulnerable but important segment of its citizenry. The hassle school pupils go through with regard to transport could not be disconnected with the mass failure in schools. After a long day in school, after the hustle and bustle of getting transport to their homes, and the and the fight to return to school the next day, one would but only think that such tedious circle of hassle would have its ugly toll on the performances of children.
If government should see the need to solve this problem, then we suggest that it tries to provide a means to conveying students on separate transport that is different from the ones used by the general public. This must also be complemented by the provision of a route that would not see them in unhealthy competition with poda poda drivers.
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