CHENNAI: While the School Education Department had recently issued circular mandating teachers, who ride motorcycles, to wear helmets to school, KA Sengottaiyan, the school education minister, contradicted the circular and said that ensuring road safety was the job of the police and transport department.
He said that the circular need not be implemented. This is the second time this week, the minister has contradicted a circular issued by the school education department.
When the department had ordered a ban on wearing colour-coded caste wristbands in schools, the minister rolled back the circular, calling it “unnecessary” and said that issuing it will create controversy.
Once again on Saturday, meeting reporters at Erode, he said that the circular mandating teachers to wear helmets was issued without his consent. He said, “ensuring road safety was not the job of the education department but of the police and transport department.”
The circular, signed by S Kannappan, the director of the department, on August 9, said that every year, a total of 569 students under the age of 18, are killed in road accidents in Tamil Nadu. A teacher who regularly wears helmets, will set a good role model for students to follow, the circular said.
It further asked teachers to create awareness on general road safety and pointed that many students fall off from footboards on buses and trains due to over-crowding and asked schools to release students in smaller batches periodically. In a bid to prevent minor students from using vehicles, the circular also instructed headmasters, to not allow students who come to school on motorcycles.
TNIE could not reach S Kannappan for comments.