ISLAMABAD, Oct 16: Federal Secretary Ministry of Capital Administration and Development (CAD) Rifat Shaheen Qazi on Tuesday instructed the principals of all educational institutions to paint their buses yellow.

Secretary CAD while talking to Dawn said that it was former secretary Asad Rauf’s suggestion and she only implemented the decision. She said that according to estimates provided to her, cost of paint of each bus would be Rs40,000.

“Because of yellow colour, it will be easy for the traffic police to know that a school bus is coming and they will give preference to school buses. Female conductor will look after the students. On Wednesday (today) I will have a meeting with the Inspector General Police to device a plan regarding the buses,” she said.

School administration has been instructed to implement the decision within 10 days, due to which 200 buses will be stopped for a week, Dawn has learnt.

One official requesting not to be identified said that on Tuesday Secretary CAD Rifat Shaheen Qazi called the principals of different educational institutes in her office and gave them a circular (available with Dawn) on which it was written that they have to paint the buses within 10 days.

It was further mentioned on the circular that the font should be in Arial Black, size of writing on Bedford Buses should be 9 inches and on Hino Buses 10 inches.

Principles expressed their concerns and said that the education department is already facing severe financial crunch and around Rs100,000 will be spent on each bus, which means Rs20 million has to be allocated. But they were told that the decision has been made and all principles have to implement it.

Spokesman of Federal Government College Teachers Association Tahir Mehmood while talking to Dawn said that the amount will be spent from the student fund.

“Students will suffer as bus service will be stopped for over a week. That amount should be spent for the purchase of books for students because the educational year has almost passed but still some students have not received the books,” he said.

“If management wants to help out the students, fee can be decreased from that money but we don’t know why the management has instructed to change the colour of buses,” he said.

Naeem Seikh, father of a student said: “If bus service would be stopped, it will become a problem for me to pick and drop my son from school to home”.