A student of Titchfield High in Portland, who was among passengers in a taxi involved in a fatal crash last year that claimed the lives of two students from the institution, has welcomed Monday’s launch of a school bus service in the parish.

The service, which is a pilot programme for a wider rural school bus system, will transport students of Titchfield and Port Antonio high schools.

“I am very relieved knowing that there is a safe transportation and we will be able to come to school,” Renika Silvera told journalists at the launch.

In May of last year, Silvera was among several students in a taxi that collided with a parked motor truck on the Blueberry Hill main road in Buff Bay, Portland. All occupants of the vehicle received injuries and were taken to the Annotto Bay Hospital where two student passengers were pronounced dead.

Richard Thompson, principal of Titchfield High, stated that he was eagerly awaiting the bus system.

“I was eagerly awaiting it. I came out with my VP [vice principal] to see firsthand our students coming off this bus,” Thompson said. “As principal, I would have lost a few students. I remember Panjal Jasti in 2019, and then last year two of our students sadly passed in accidents. I’m hoping that this will bring significant change.”

He said this initiative represents safety not just for Titchfield students but for all the students in the parish.

Member of Parliament for Portland Eastern, Ann-Marie Vaz said she was determined to ensure that a school bus system to provide safe transport for students was introduced, following a series of accidents in the parish.

“I want to say that this vision was something that I had from the accidents that we have had in the parish, where we lost three or four students,” Ann-Marie Vaz said.

Vaz announced that she and her husband, MP for Portland Western and Transport Minister Daryl Vaz, will donate a total of four buses to students in the parish.

“One that you’re seeing now will go from Buff Bay into Port Antonio. The other one will come from Hector’s River into Port Antonio, and one will go into the Buff Bay valley and the other into the Rio Grande valley, after which we will be receiving seven government buses so that across the entire parish our students will be safe. The vision, action, and the results of that vision are what we are seeing here today,” she said.

She encouraged the students to take care of the buses and treat the buses as their own.

“I want to encourage our students to treat the bus as their own, because the bus belongs to you. Take care of it. And one of the things I wanted was for the bus to have Wi-Fi, because the truth is some students’ homes do not have Wi-Fi. So to and from school, they will be able to do homework to do their research,” Ann-Marie Vaz said.

She added: “And most importantly, the parents of this child will be able to track her movements on the bus. So they will know when the bus leaves school and what time the bus will get to their drop-off point. This is to ensure the safety of our students and the peace of mind for the parents. And I’m overjoyed today, and I want to say that I congratulate the government, seeing the impact of what this bus will do to our students in Portland and to be rolling out a national school bus service across the island.”

Transport Minister Daryl Vaz noted that it will take some time for the buses to integrate into the shift system and, as a result, urged patience from parents and students.

“We realise that there are two campuses for the Port Antonio High, and there are children that need to go to fellowship. So that’s a good logistics exercise this morning because we now have to make tweaks to the schedule based on time,” Daryl Vaz said.

“The good thing is that Port Antonio High starts at 7 am and Titchfield starts at 8 am. So we’ll be able to move earlier for the earlier shift and later for the later shift. It’s going to take time for all the buses to get into the system,” he continued. “So the fact is that I’m asking for patience from the parents and the students because not everybody is going to be able to benefit from the single bus that we have now, but definitely for September morning and January morning we will have increased buses and we will go for the logistics. The most important thing for me today, as the principal said, is the safety.”

Meanwhile, Vaz noted that the aim of the bus system is not to compete with the local transport system but to provide a comfortable and safe means of transport for students.

“I want to make it clear again that we are not competing against the public transportation system. As minister, my mandate from my government is that we must find a solution for a safe, affordable rural school system. All of the transport operators have the opportunity to continue to participate because we’ll never be able to transport all the children to school,” the minister said.

“But there are enough adults for them to have a viable business rather than trying to squeeze children in trunks and all over the cars on top of one another like cargo. It’s unacceptable. So again, my position is very clear. We need to work together – private transportation, public transportation, the government and the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Transport are committed to that, and you are going to see a rollout of the hundred school buses promised,” he added.

The transport minister said with the rollout of another 100 Jamaica Urban Transit Corporation (JUTC) buses, both the children and adults in the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region (KMTR) and rural Jamaica will see and benefit from an improved transport system.

Video: Everard Owen