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Education, transport, and health bureaucrats fail A/L exam candidates
Parents and Advanced Level exam candidates in locked down areas are suffering because public transport has ground to a halt and alternatives are rare. If and when available, hired transport can be prohibitively expensive.
Parents are accusing public officials of letting them down. There have been instances when several students were late to exams centres and as a result lost some of the allotted time to answer their papers. One parent complained that the government had ignored the consequences of candidates turning up late due to lack of public transport.
While some invigilators have allowed late-comers extra time, others have stuck to the rules. They said that they had not received any directives from the examinations department to allow more time.
Some parents said hiring private transport is costly. One parent had spent Rs. 6,000 a day for a student to travel from Panadura to Royal College in Colombo. Another parent from Ja-ela said he had spent about Rs. 10,000 to take his daughter to the exam hall in Kotahena over six days. But, for many, public transport is the only option.
Students have been seen stranded waiting for buses in locked down areas. A student who travelled from Avissawella to Colombo by train, was stranded in Colombo on Wednesday and was picked up by the police who took him to the exam centre at Thurstan College.
Ceylon Teachers Union General Secretary Joseph Stalin, said that although the government promised trains and buses, officials failed the students. “There was no proper coordination between the services.’’
Some desperate parents gave their children rides on their motorbikes. Families living in the same locality arranged three-wheelers and shared the cost. There was also the occasional humanitarian effort when invigilators picked up students waiting for buses.
Some families who had cars offered to take their neighbours’ children along with their own. Also, friends and relatives were seen helping with transport. But, for some, even three-wheeler rides could not be negotiated because drivers would not work during the lockdown fearing the police would seize their vehicles and arrest them.
Although the government said that student admission cards could be used as curfew passes the drivers would not have such a document for the return trip. Some drivers took the risks and demanded heavy hire charges.
One had asked for Rs 6,000 for a day’s return fare from Panadura to Royal College, Colombo. Meanwhile, the presence of students in isolation, because of contact with a virus infected person, doing the exams in the same premises as other candidates further raised anxiety.
Although the Health Ministry had made arrangements to have the students isolated during the exam time, once they were done, they were seen mingling with the rest. One invigilator said that all of them came out of the centre at the same time, having overlooked the social distancing rules.