Parents more confident with council's initiative

Dubai:  The Abu Dhabi Education Council has announced that in a bid to to prevent child abuse on school buses, schools will have to install GPS (Global Positioning System) devices and surveillance cameras on board. Gulf News readers shared their views on the new regulations.

Abu Dhabi-based Binu Thomas is the father of a four year old. He calls the initiative a wonderful decision. "Children should be of the highest priority," he said. However, he feels that it has taken a while.

Being a parent, he would always like to know that his child is safe. Now, he said, he can feel more comfortable about sending his child to school.

Heidi Buck, a Dubai-based elementary school teacher can't wait for the initiative to spread to other emirates. Though she doubts that the regulations will eliminate child abuse completely, Buck thinks that the cameras will at least make the buses a safe place for children.

Keep up the awareness

Hamriya Abdul Rahman is the mother of two boys who attend school in Abu Dhabi. She has always felt very uncomfortable sending her children on school buses. She said that abuse is not necessarily sexual and that her sons have experienced incompetent drivers more than once. "It really makes a difference to me that there will always be a camera watching," she said.

She dreads that people will lose focus on the issue now that a lot has already been done. "We should keep up the awareness," she said.

Ideally Hamriya would like a mother to be on the school bus every day, and she proposes that the non-working mothers should take turns.

Supriya Prasad Sawant, who lives in Sharjah, has two sons aged six and 11. She did not like the idea of her children being under camera surveillance. But it seems to her as the only option left.

"I don't like the thought of my two sons having to grow up with a camera capturing everything they do," she said. She wondered if the next initiative will include cameras inside the schools.