DUBAI– Gulf Pinnacle Transport (GPT) is ready to ferry students back to classes when education institutions resume activities for new academic year starting next week.
GPT, the leading school transport service provider, said it is committed to student safety and evolves a comprehensive operational plan to implement effective measures against the coronavirus pandemic.
Under the plan, the company will ensure pre-trip bus sanitization, social distancing of students before boarding and de-boarding as well as onboard by maintaining a maximum bus capacity at 50%.
Mandatory face mask, personal hygiene, temperature checks, ID-card scanning, seat belts, and post-trip sanitisation are some of the key components of the plan.
Student safety top priority
Ganesh Sivaraman, director and head of Gulf Pinnacle Transport, said students safety is “our top most priority” and GPT will fully implement the government’s advisory for school transport service providers on social distancing.
“We have developed an effective initiative ‘CARE’ (Comprehensive Action and Response to Emergency) to ensure effective implementation of social distancing norms prescribed by KHDA for student transportation in new academic year,” he said.
GPT will be the first transport provider to maintain a record of body temperature of students and staff through its in-house mobile application. These records can be monitored through automated reports by the company and school administration.
Moreover, GPT has also taken the disinfection requirement one step further by upgrading the mobile app that keeps record of disinfections carried out after every single trip. To cope with the added requirements of COVID precautionary measures, the company has also introduced online training modules to the drivers and bus supervisors before school opening this week.
GPT, which started with three school contracts in Dubai in August 2016, and currently serving 14 schools with 275 buses, transporting over 6,500 students. The company bagged the first place in RTA’s prestigious Dubai Award for Sustainable Transport in the “Transport Safety” category during the 2018 Awards ceremony.
Fool-proof system
Sachin Gupta, general manager of Gulf Pinnacle Investments LLC (GPI), the UAE subsidiary of Gulf Pinnacle Logistics, the owner of GPT, said the company has evolved a fool-proof school transport system to ensure safety of students.
“We have developed an overall framework with the stages of planning, prevention, control, response plan and review. GPT has taken this initiative to enhance our crisis management capabilities by developing a Covid-19 Crisis Management Plan for School Transportation Services,” Mr Gupta said.
He said the company had also formed a crisis management team to handle all the transport activities in an efficient manner.
“We had established a monitoring system and practices to detect early warning signals of any potential crisis. The Crisis Management Plan will enable GPT to swiftly attend to and mitigate the impact of suspected and identified cases of Covid-19, ensuring the safety of students and staff as well as the swift continuation of our services,” Mr Gupta concluded.— PRESS RELEASE
