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Fair fares for all students
Pair lobby online, draw up petition for equal transport rates
Monday • March 21, 2005
Patricia Yap
patricia@newstoday.com.sg
TWO 18-year-old polytechnic students are agitating online for lower public transport fares for all polytechnic students.
Ngee Ann Polytechnic students Pang Khin Wee and Liang Yu Qing want TransitLink to grant the same fare concessions to those studying in polytechnics, as they do to junior college and Institute of Technical Education (ITE) students.
To this end, they have started an online petition to garner support from students who feel it is unfair for concessions to be given only to junior college and ITE students, who are in the same age group as polytechnic students.
Mr Pang and Mr Liang have also written to TransitLink to offer their views on the situation.
Currently, polytechnic students can buy Bus Concession Passes (BCP), Train Concession Passes or Hybrid Concession Passes (HCP), for $52, $45 and $97, respectively, and they will be charged adult fares if they travel without the passes.
In comparison, secondary school, junior college and ITE students are charged student rates — almost half those of adult rates — even if they do not buy the passes.
The concession passes for these students range from $27.50 for a BCP to $52.50 for an HCP.
Within a week of the launch of the online petition on March 11, about 5,800 students from polytechnics and junior colleges had signed up to support the cause.
Comments such as "polytechnic students are students too" and "our school fees already cost so much; must transport fares be so expensive too?" were pasted all over the site when Today visited it yesterday.
"We are already charged so much for our education. The least that can be done to ease our financial burden is to lower transport costs," said Liang, who spends more than a third of his $200 monthly allowance on transport. His father was retrenched recently and the cost of transport has put a strain on his family's budget.
Said Pang: "We enrolled in polytechnic because we had a passion for the courses available. It's not our choice that the institution is labelled tertiary.
"Tertiary or not, we are still students."
Even junior college students are pitching in. Sim Wei Yow, a second-year student from Pioneer Junior College, signed the petition without hesitation, although the issue does not affect him directly.
He said: "I think it's quite unfair that my friends, who are the same age as I am but studying in polytechnics, have to pay a lot more than I do, even if we are going to the same places."
In response to the petition, a TransitLink spokesperson said eligibility for student travel concession on public buses and trains was not pegged solely to the student's age but also based on the "level of academic pursuit and the institutions in which they are enrolled".
According to TransitLink, polytechnics and universities are officially grouped as tertiary institutions, whereas junior colleges and ITEs are grouped under the secondary-school category.
"Nevertheless, we have taken note of the views submitted by the students. They will be considered when we next review concession fares," the spokesperson said.
Fair fares for all students
Pair lobby online, draw up petition for equal transport rates
Monday • March 21, 2005
Patricia Yap
patricia@newstoday.com.sg
TWO 18-year-old polytechnic students are agitating online for lower public transport fares for all polytechnic students.
Ngee Ann Polytechnic students Pang Khin Wee and Liang Yu Qing want TransitLink to grant the same fare concessions to those studying in polytechnics, as they do to junior college and Institute of Technical Education (ITE) students.
To this end, they have started an online petition to garner support from students who feel it is unfair for concessions to be given only to junior college and ITE students, who are in the same age group as polytechnic students.
Mr Pang and Mr Liang have also written to TransitLink to offer their views on the situation.
Currently, polytechnic students can buy Bus Concession Passes (BCP), Train Concession Passes or Hybrid Concession Passes (HCP), for $52, $45 and $97, respectively, and they will be charged adult fares if they travel without the passes.
In comparison, secondary school, junior college and ITE students are charged student rates — almost half those of adult rates — even if they do not buy the passes.
The concession passes for these students range from $27.50 for a BCP to $52.50 for an HCP.
Within a week of the launch of the online petition on March 11, about 5,800 students from polytechnics and junior colleges had signed up to support the cause.
Comments such as "polytechnic students are students too" and "our school fees already cost so much; must transport fares be so expensive too?" were pasted all over the site when Today visited it yesterday.
"We are already charged so much for our education. The least that can be done to ease our financial burden is to lower transport costs," said Liang, who spends more than a third of his $200 monthly allowance on transport. His father was retrenched recently and the cost of transport has put a strain on his family's budget.
Said Pang: "We enrolled in polytechnic because we had a passion for the courses available. It's not our choice that the institution is labelled tertiary.
"Tertiary or not, we are still students."
Even junior college students are pitching in. Sim Wei Yow, a second-year student from Pioneer Junior College, signed the petition without hesitation, although the issue does not affect him directly.
He said: "I think it's quite unfair that my friends, who are the same age as I am but studying in polytechnics, have to pay a lot more than I do, even if we are going to the same places."
In response to the petition, a TransitLink spokesperson said eligibility for student travel concession on public buses and trains was not pegged solely to the student's age but also based on the "level of academic pursuit and the institutions in which they are enrolled".
According to TransitLink, polytechnics and universities are officially grouped as tertiary institutions, whereas junior colleges and ITEs are grouped under the secondary-school category.
"Nevertheless, we have taken note of the views submitted by the students. They will be considered when we next review concession fares," the spokesperson said.
