The tragedy was avertable

This tragedy was very much avertable; the lives of those 17 little school boys and girls and their teacher could have been saved. But it was not to be, because everything that could be wrong with the van they were travelling in on their fateful journey to the school some distance away in the rural Gujrat was there. Greed and incompetence had conspired to take the lives of these kids and their lady teacher who didn't shrink a bit in her duty to teach her pupils the secrets of life and death even at the cost of her own life.
The van was overloaded; without the fitness certificate; was plying between routes without a route permit and it was being driven by a person whose driving licence is of doubtful origin. Not only this, the van was owned by the owner of the school - in line with the unholy practice popular with a large number of private school owners who pick up discarded vans from the junk market and offer the parents their 'subsidised' pick-and-drop service. Among the dead were three siblings - a brother and his two sisters - all between six and nine: Can there be a grimmer tragedy in the life of any parent? But this is not the first of such fatal accidents and even when we would very much wish it be the last, there is little hope of that wish being fulfilled. With very few exceptions the pick-and-drop system run by schools is incorrigibly corrupted.
Imagine the size of this curse: the district administration has now decided to 'verify' the fitness certificates of some 2,000 school vehicles. Why now and why not before when it was due? The officials owe an explanation to the people of Pakistan. That the entire district and provincial officialdom is sad over the school van tragedy (compensations have been announced and Chief Minister Sethi would show up to offer condolences) is crassly hypocritical. This tragedy was very much avertable, but it happened because the administration had failed to perform its duty. The criminals are unmistakably identifiable. They should be punished.
Undoubtedly, the greed and incompetence have taken hold of us both as a society and a system. This tragedy is hardly a strong enough jolt to pull the greedy school owners, corrupt fitness inspectors and inefficient traffic police which is tasked to check the misuse of the pick-and-drop facility. The van caught fire because it was fitted with a plastic can that was connected to the fuel tank instead of the original fuel line, or perhaps, the van also carried extra fuel in a plastic can placed inside, which the children smelt and even pointed out to driver. The question is: why there was no one to check this risky enterprise, not only in this van but in thousands of other vehicles which too are fitted with plastic fuel cans? The time has come that instead of cowering to interested lobbies and pressure groups the government should take a very firm stand on this malpractice and eradicate it once and for all. School-going children are the most precious national asset; that they should be left at the mercy of these merchants of death has to be stopped. The permission to run a school should be made conditional to certain undertakings by the owners - in that they should ensure that the vans and buses used for the pick-and-drop are duly examined by fitness inspectors; they should make sure that only properly licensed drivers are employed and that vehicles are not overloaded. In this the parents too have a responsibility to keep a watch over the roadworthiness of the vehicles that ferry their children to schools. The local DCO is right in asking how a single motor vehicle examiner in the district can check each and every vehicle, and therefore, alternatively the roads are "regularly picketed". But then who has to ask for more manpower, if not the DCO. Is it news for him and his tribe in the government that hundreds of lives are lost every year in gas-cylinder explosions in public buses and vans? This heartless indifference to life and limb of the people must cease here and now.