The Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) has said that students can travel free of cost to schools in government buses as usual, till they are provided with new bus passes. Students can produce the bus passes given to them last year.
Photo : Ramachandran Palaniramu
A senior official said that they have also instructed conductors not to demand a pass or collect fare from children without an old pass, if they were in their school uniform.
This is applicable for school students in Coimbatore Division – comprising Coimbatore, The Nilgiris, Tirupur and Erode districts.
Every year, when schools reopen, students face the ire of conductors, who demand a bus pass or force the children to get down at odd places. While passes were issued to students in June every year, this year it could be delayed by a couple of months as the TNSTC has just started process for issuance of passes.
The official said bus passes for students across the State are printed by a contractor through a tender participation mode. This was delayed this year as tenders could not be awarded with the model code of conduct for the Assembly elections in effect till a week ago.
TNSTC is working with the school education department to collect the applications from schools in the first two weeks, process it and distribute passes to students by the first week of August. The official said that in the academic year 2015-16 they issued 3.93 lakh bus passes to schoolchildren in four districts in Coimbatore Division. This year the number of passes could go up to 4.1 lakh.
Students can contact 0422-2431521(Coimbatore Divisional Head Office, TNSTC) if they have any issues or complaints with regard to the free travel.
