The Thailand Consumers Council (TCC) says there is cause for concern over safety on school buses and urged schools nationwide to address the matter.
Saree Aongsomwang, secretary-general of the TCC, met Education Minister Pol Gen Permpoon Chidchob on April 23 to seek consumer protection cooperation to improve the school bus system.
The move stemmed from the growing number of road accidents involving school buses in recent years, which affected students' basic rights to safety.
Ms Saree said the TCC urged the minister to include school bus management as one of its main missions. Assessments should be conducted regularly, and schools that fail to comply with the rules should be punished.
The TCC urged the ministry to promote learning centres for school bus safety and develop guidelines for schools, personnel, parents and state agencies.
The TCC and Thai Health Promotion Foundation are working on a public transport development plan. School bus safety management and learning centres are expected to be piloted in 20 schools nationwide.
Pol Gen Permpoon agreed, saying school buses should be legally registered.
Previously, the TCC proposed a draft school bus safety policy to the Ombudsman, which was later submitted to cabinet.
In January alone, six incidents were reported involving school buses, with 51 injured victims, one of whom had a limb amputated, and one died. That figure accounted for 20% of all data for 2022.
"More than 45,000 people are driving school buses without permits, which is a danger to our children," Kongsak Chuenkrailat, assistant secretary of the TCC's subcommittee on transport and vehicles, said.
Anuchar Sethasathien, the subcommittee's chairman, presented an example of a school bus management system in Chiang Rai, which works with school bus business operators, the provincial transport office and academics.
Engineers had helped define school transit vehicles and issued safety criteria for business operators to use as a reference to comply with standards set by the Department of Land Transport. He stressed the importance of schools' participation in efforts to boost safety.