Children in Kotor do not have transportation to school: Sometimes they stop, sometimes they walk and in the rain

The Council of Parents of the School Center, which includes the Gymnasium, Medical and Economic School in Kotor, sent an open letter to the Municipality of Kotor and the Ministry of Education to urgently solve the problem of student transportation, both high school and elementary school students, because more than 200 children are left to the will of the transporters every day in connection with whether they will be transported to school institutions or often left to get wet and walk.

Although parents have been warning about this problem for years, the city fathers remained silent.

Everything culminated this year, because children practically can't come to school in the morning because the buses don't want to stop at the stations and pick up the students, some walk for kilometers, while others are transported by their parents in cars, which creates an even bigger traffic collapse in Kotor in the morning.

"Students who use transportation to school in the territory of the Kotor municipality have been fighting for the basic conditions for years due to poor communication between representatives of the Municipality and the arbitrariness of the carrier who won the job for carrying out passenger transportation activities ("Blue Line") at the tender. Due to the huge problem of traffic jams, which are increasing every year, children from the territory of the municipality of Kotor do not have regulated quality transportation. The entire coastal area from Tivat, through Lepetan, Stolivo, Prčanja and Mula has no school transport, but children with purchased school tickets are forced to use the city line which does not have the capacity to accept all the passengers who drive on that route at that time. An even bigger problem is the lateness of the bus, so the students of the School Center are in daily trouble due to being late for class, which often cannot be justified, despite all the will and deliberation of the class elders. Given that it is a city transport line that continues along the coastal road to the main road to the camp in Dobrota, the children are not brought to the school, but are left on a road that is not in the immediate vicinity of the school, therefore the time passing that distance is extended to constant lateness," states the open letter of the Council of Parents.

As they point out, the same problem is faced by children from the area of ​​Grblje who gravitate towards schools in Kotor, because the bus only passes through the main road through Radanovići, so it is often easier for parents to drive their children directly to school, than to drive them to specific locations, without adequate stops that the children would wait for transport in those places.

"Only the stop above the Kotor high school center does not have any canopy, so hundreds of students and passengers waiting for buses in all directions from that junction do not have adequate shelter from bad weather, and it often happens that they have to wait for a long time. Considering the territorial disparity of the municipality, the transportation problem does not only apply to high school students, but also elementary school children who have to walk a few kilometers to school. In today's inadequate conditions for pedestrians and traffic jams, and in the midst of irregular school transport, parents are forced to drive their children and thus in the morning hours, before the start of classes and the working day, unbearable crowds are created in the center of Kotor, so for a distance of four The kilometer to be covered takes up to 45 minutes, given that it goes through the narrowest center covered with traffic lights, which further complicates and slows down the traffic," emphasizes the Council of Parents, with an invitation to the councils of parents of other schools to join the initiative.

During the last year, there was an initiative to create a list of students who would use transportation at the level of all schools in the municipality.

"So there were about 200 children on the list from Njegoš Elementary School alone. The municipality, in cooperation with the ministry, has promised to co-finance the costs of student tickets. Parents expected that it would be implemented from September, but the situation remained unchanged regarding the organization of transportation and after several days of trying to use transportation, parents were forced to get into their cars and drive their children to school with the first rain. It remains unclear why the Municipality of Kotor, with its ignorant attitude towards poor city and school transport, does not see that it is only creating a bigger communal problem and traffic congestion, instead of solving all the problems, which have lasted for years and with which the Municipality's administration is she is well aware, but does not show the will to solve the problem", the Council of Parents points out.