31/03/2022
“I saw on the news that there won’t be diesel for anyone for the next few days. If we don’t get our fuel, I don’t know how to tell the parents of the children I transport to and from school that I will have to stop my service,” Jayantha, (60) told Roar Media. Jayantha has been operating school transport for almost 20 years now, and owns a van and a small bus, both of which are used to transport children to school and return them home safely.
But the ongoing crisis has his service a blow; earlier this week, the government announced a severe scarcity of diesel in the country, pleading with the public to not queue outside distribution stations for diesel.
“Before this was announced, we used to rush to the closest fuel station after dropping the children at school, in search of diesel. We stayed in the queue for hours,” he said. The long hours in the fuel queue did not guarantee that they would be able to purchase fuel before the school ended at 1:30 p.m. Which meant that they would either have to wait in the queue longer and keep the children waiting or make use of the fuel left in their vehicles and risk the drive back.
“Our school runs are like clockwork, even if we get 10 minutes late, we will start getting calls from the parents. We very reluctantly increased the monthly fees after the fuel price hike. Looks like we need to increase it further if the fuel prices go up again,” he said.
Jayantha and many others in his profession were only just returning to a sense of normalcy after the COVID-19 lockdowns closed schools for well over a year and impacted the country’s economy with it.
"During the pandemic when the schools were online, we took a major hit. We were unable to run the buses because there was no school. Then when the date for the schools to start again began to get regularly postponed, we started losing patience. I was really happy that the schools started functioning again. But now, just when we thought we could return to work, the diesel crisis is crushing us.”
Photo credit: Roar Media/Nazly Ahmed
