JEDDAH: The campaign against swine flu, jointly carried out by the ministries of health and education, has partly neglected transport for female students, the director for the school transport project in the Makkah region has claimed.
Marwan bin Hussain Al-Solaiman claims pupils sometimes have to travel more than 25 minutes in a bus journey to and from school. He told Arab News, “A female supervisor was to be stationed in each school to take care of this aspect as originally planned in the campaign but this did not happen.”
He added the 435 vehicles transporting around 50,000 female students daily in cities of the region were sterilized about a month ago when the filters of the air conditioning systems were cleaned or changed. He also said the drivers were trained on the pandemic and means of its spread through coordination with the Directorate General of Traffic and the Dallah company. “However this does not make them suitable to enlighten and guide the female students.”
Al-Solaiman revealed as part of the project a training session would be organized next week in Makkah to train female students about measures that would help protect them against swine flu while using school transport.
