C T Online Desk: Chittagong district administration’s smart school bus-innovation initiative has become the first under Smart District Innovation Challenge-2023. For which Chittagong District Commissioner Abul Basar Mohammad Fakhruzzaman received a check award of Tk 80 lakh from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
On Wednesday (October 18) morning, he received a check of Tk.
10 double-decker buses are running on different routes to save the city’s school-going students from severe traffic jams, suffering of parents, high travel costs, wastage of fuel, road accidents and work hours.
Chittagong district administration is taking and implementing various plans with the slogan ‘Prosperous city, developed village, smart Chittagong with the touch of technology’ as a part of building Smart Bangladesh announced by the Prime Minister. In continuation of this, Chittagong district administration’s innovative initiative called ‘Smart School Bus’ was selected for the first prize under the ‘Smart District Innovation Challenge’, a competition based on the innovative activities of the districts of the country, conducted by the Aspire to Innovate (A2I) program under the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology under the guidance of the Cabinet Division. . A total of 89 innovative proposals were submitted from different districts of the country. According to the verdict of the judges, 5 districts including Chittagong were finally selected. Other selected districts are – Cox’s Bazar District Administration-2nd for One Stop Service for Tourist Innovative Initiative, Dhaka District Administration-3rd for Fire Extinguishing and Gas Leak Prevention Management Innovative Initiative, Thakurgaon District Administration Fourth and Smart Union for Smart Food Grain Stock Management Innovative Initiative, Panchagarh district administration is fifth for Upazila and Municipal Management System Innovation initiative.
The District Administrators of these districts received awards from the Prime Minister on the occasion.
According to sources, various plans have been undertaken under the Smart School Bus initiative. If the plans are implemented, the 10 double-decker buses running for the convenience of students will use smart technology such as GPS trackers, IP cameras, AI to send automatic SMS to parents’ phones during boarding and alighting of students in the school, monitoring the location of students in the bus, school timings through short-term coordination. Travel to school-college will be ensured at cost. In addition to the preparation of database of students, various devices including GPS tracker, state-of-the-art CC camera, cashless payment method through students’ smart cards have been added to the buses. There are also plans to gradually increase the number of buses as per the demand.
