Sinton Soalablai, MOE Chief of School Management said they are aware that the situation is not good for the students that the current available bus is not convenient to transport the students.
“It’s too crowded because it is just a 30-seater bus and students are standing around and it’s a long trip but we can only do so much, all buses are broken,” Soalablai said in an interview on Wednesday.
“Before we used the 60-seater bus to transport them and by that time it gets to Ngatpang and Koror it’s already full but today, we used a 30-seater to transport them so students are not really comfortable,”he said.
He said the problem started only last September. Solablai said in September, all three buses broke down.
He said two 60-seater buses went down on September 11 and four days later, September 15, another bus broke down.
Soablai said the buses are already old vehicles.
“They are 17-year-old buses and the problem is the breaks and the engine and we don’t have an in-house mechanic to fix the problem and we don’t have enough funds to have it repair outside,” Soablai said.
Skeras Ucherrengos, Transportation Manager, in a separate interview said that every day they are transporting 63 students from West Coast and 52 students from East Coast all the way to Koror.
Then they will also pick up 108 students from Airai.
But because the current bus can only accommodate very few students, they only picked up 38 students from Airai out of these 108.
He said students from Koror provided their own transportation.
“We cannot accommodate them anymore because of the current situation, so they are on their own,” Ucherrengos said.
He said everyday he received complaints from parents in Koror and some parts in Airai.
“They always called and complained and I just told them to wait until we fix the buses,” he said.
Prior to September 11, MOE had six buses transporting students from West Coast and East Coast down to Airai and Koror.
Ucherrengos said they had three 60-seater buses and three 30-seater buses.
