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Back to school in UAE: Emirates Transport adds 490 buses to fleet, improves safety features

For the upcoming academic year, it will provide services to 170,000 students

Emirates Transport (ET) on Monday launched a massive operation to transport 241,000 students at the start of the new academic year.

Ahead of the start, the company completed its preparations for the new academic year by organizing the "School Transport Week", which included extensive training and refresher courses for thousands of bus drivers and supervisors.

The week also saw Faryal Tawakul, Acting CEO of Emirates Transport, conduct several coordination visits to schools, as well as field inspection tours of its work sites, where she was accompanied by executive leaders and managers from the company.

According to Tawakul, 490 new school buses were added to upgrade ET’s fleet of 6,962 school buses and vehicles equipped with the latest safety features, to maintain the safety and comfort of students during their daily transfers to school.

She stated that, for the upcoming academic year, Emirates Transport will provide school transport service to 170,000 students studying in 504 government schools, using 4,161 buses, 4,200 drivers and 4,500 bus supervisors.

In addition, a further 54,794 students will be transported to 122 private schools through 2,256 buses and 2,256 drivers, whilst the number of transported students from universities, colleges and other educational institutions stands at over 16,000, with more than 800 buses and 800 drivers allocated to provide the service for them.

Khaled Shukur, manager of the Department for Quality, Environment and Occupational Health and Safety, said the company has updated the School Transport Safety Procedures Manual, as well as the company’s comprehensive plan to protect transferred students from coronavirus.

He added that several health and preventive requirements have been put in place to ensure the safety of students throughout the school transport process.

Regarding the use of digital services to organize and facilitate the school transport service, Talal Al Najjar, Digital Services Operation Senior Manager at ET, stated that the company has successfully launched a system to enrol and register students in the government school transport service for the upcoming school year.

He added that the company also offers parents the smart application Hafilaty (My Bus) enabling them to monitor the school bus journeys of their children, in addition to providing the smart platform ONE-ET which gives school administrators access to important transport data for each bus separately and monitor performance indicators of the transport service.

The Digital Services Operation Senior Manager also highlighted the implementing of the initiative Your Children are Safe, which was previously developed in cooperation with the Sharjah Private Education Authority.

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