Students and parents crossing D Ring Road in Doha to reach their school. (Pictures used for illustrative purpose only) PICTURES: Noushad Thekkayil
A number of parents have expressed concern over the absence of proper car parking facilities at some schools and how this poses a safety risk to children, local Arabic daily Arrayah has reported.
They pointed out that some of the schools are located on main streets and do not have adequate facilities where parents can park their vehicles when they go to drop their children or pick them up, the report stated.
As a result, parents have to park their cars outside or at a distance, which leads to traffic congestion in the peak hours in areas where these schools are located and may also cause accidents as people are forced to use the roads – often dangerously - to reach their vehicles, it is learnt.
The parents have called for strict monitoring of schools and sought punishment for those who do not comply with safety requirements for school buildings. Licences to operate a school should include conditions such as providing safe and adequate parking facilities to ease traffic around its premises and a satisfactory number of buses to ferry students.
Also, schools should be located in a suitable and accessible place and whose entrance should be far from roads with fast-moving traffic, the parents have said in the report.
As remedial measures, the parents have also suggested the establishment of pedestrian bridges around schools to ease traffic and deployment of additional security personnel to manage the situation in front of schools and ensure the safety of students, particularly in the peak hours, according to the report.
The residents have called for finding solutions to the congestion and chaos that is seen outside schools every day, which involves students, their parents, teachers and vehicles. Some of them also attribute the problem to the absence of adequate space in front of a few schools, the report added.
