Muscat: A ten-year-old student died on the spot and 14 other Indian School Seeb pupils were injured when a 15-seater van crashed against the road divider in Seeb suburb of Muscat on Wednesday.
“Ten-year-old Jabir Rashid died on the spot,” P. M. Jabir, Welfare Secretary at the Indian Social Club, told Gulf News. He added that arrangements were being made to send body of the fifth grade Indian School Seeb student to his hometown in old seaport town Quilon in southern Indian state Kerala.
Deceased boy’s elder brother Aamir was also in the bus but escaped with minor injuries. Two children with serious injuries have been admitted to Royal Hospital and one at the Armed Forces Hospital.
Jabir said that the bus, driven by a young Omani driver, was ferrying children from Fanja town, about 40km from Indian School Seeb.
“According to a tenth standard student, who was injured in the accident, the driver dozed off at the wheel in front of the City Centre in Seeb and bus crashed across three lanes before hitting the side dividers before resting on it’s side,” Salih Thacher, a parent at the Indian School Seeb, told Gulf News.
He also wondered about the logic behind opening the school for just one day between six-day Eid holidays and two-day weekend. The government school open only on Saturday.
“A large number of Omani drivers don’t turn up as they have left for their villages and prefer to add weekend to the holidays,” he said, adding the contractors are forced to hire inexperienced young drivers on day-to-day basis to meet crisis on such days.
Thacher, who is part of the parents’ association, pointed out that the young driver who was behind the wheels of the fatal accident was apparently on a one-week trial.
An Indian school bus contractor echoed Thacher’s sentiments when he said that several drivers were absent yesterday, forcing them to employ inexperienced young drivers for a day or week.
Under the labour laws of the country, expatriates are forbidden to drive school transport vehicles.
“Most Omani drivers prefer to go to their hometowns in the interior and abstain on one day between long holidays and the weekend,” the bus contractors said, requesting not to be named.
Thacher and the bus contractors both felt that it would have been best for the Indian Schools to open on Saturday like all government schools in Oman.
