Many children in Singapore head to student care centres after school to be taken care of while their parents are still at work.
Instead of going to student care, however, one girl spent two hours locked in a school bus, her mother said.
Source: Iveco Brasil on Flickr, for illustration purposes only.
This happened because the girl was left inside the bus and not noticed by the bus driver, said the student care centre.
The incident was shared in a lengthy Facebook post on Tuesday (7 Mar) by the girl’s mother, Ms Law.
While she didn’t reveal her daughter’s exact age, she said that the young girl is a Primary 1 (P1) student at a primary school in Yishun — which puts her at six or seven years old.
After school from Mondays to Fridays, she took a school bus to PlayFACTO School at Orchid Country Club in Yishun.
That student care centre is the main custodian for her after schooling hours, Ms Law said.
However, on 2 Mar, the schedule encountered a hitch.
The girl left school at 1.30pm that day and was picked up by the school bus at 1.45pm, Ms Law recounted.
It departed for the student care centre.
However, at 3.45pm, the bus operator called the student care centre, informing them that a child had been left on the bus.
They were on the way back to the centre to send her there, though they didn’t know who the child was.
At 3.55pm, the centre verified the child’s identity and advised the bus operator to call her parents.
Ms Law said she received a call from the operator at 3.56pm, informing her of the incident.
Her daughter finally made it to the centre at 4pm.
Ms Law was unsurprisingly displeased, saying that her daughter was “left alone, locked and unattended” for two hours.
The girl allegedly didn’t have any food with her, and risked suffocation in the confined environment, she added.
She even tried to knock on the glass window to attract attention from passers-by.
Thankfully, the child was still conscious when she was eventually discovered, her mother said, fearing a more disastrous outcome.
Ms Law took issue with the student care centre, saying they were not aware that her daughter was missing for two hours.
They only realised her disappearance when contacted by the bus operator, she said.
Source: Google Maps
She claimed that there was “no proper handover” of the students from the bus to the centre, and no headcount was conducted by the teacher receiving them.
As the teacher in charge of the class was supposed to be notified by the centre manager about any absentees, she should’ve known that her daughter was missing, Ms Law indicated.
Thus, she concluded that “the teacher in charge was (is) not aware nor concern[ed] about the missing child”.
Worse still, they “tried to shunt the blame” by asking the bus operator to call her instead, she said.
When she was called, there was also “a lack of details”. Both the operator and student care centre described the incident “in pieces”, she noted, adding,
We are led to believe that there is a serious lapse of safety protocol within the student care. There is a clear lack of ownership, accountability and safety awareness from the student care representatives who counted the students onboarding the bus, handing over the students to the student care without proper accounting the handover, and the ignorant/irresponsiveness of the teacher in-charge of the class who is not aware of the missing child.
Ms Law told Channel NewsAsia (CNA) that she has since taken her daughter out of the student care centre.
In a statement quoted by CNA, PlayFACTO School explained why the girl missed her stop.
She fell asleep on the bus, they said, and was not accounted for by the teacher.
The bus driver also failed to check the bus when it returned to the depot, the statement noted.
The girl was “quickly located” and was unharmed. She was also “in good spirits”, the centre maintained, adding,
We have since implemented more stringent protocols for teachers and bus operators to prevent a recurrence.
Ms Law also told CNA that her daughter was “okay”.
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Featured image adapted from Iveco Brasil on Flickr, for illustration purposes only.
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