\u201cYou know, she\u2019s an 11-year-old child, she\u2019s trying to get up to school on time,\u201d she told RNZ last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have taught our children that they can trust adults and that good adults will help them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, the Children\u2019s Commissioner says it\u2019s not right what happened to the student.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis caught my attention because I assume it was really upsetting for this 11-year-old and stressful for them,\u201d Claire Achmad told RNZ.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo child should be left behind, as Auckland Transport has acknowledged, and I really don\u2019t think what occurred in this situation was acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Achmad said she wanted to understand what policies were in place and would be taking an active interest in what happened next.<\/p>\n
Auckland Transport told RNZ last week its expectation was no child should be left behind as the girl was, and it had contacted bus operator Kinetic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s good that Auckland Transport has owned this,\u201d Achmad said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think that\u2019s a positive outcome because that\u2019s Auckland Transport sending a clear message that situations like this should be avoided.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo child should be left behind when they\u2019re trying to get to school in a situation like this and transport providers have a responsibility to ensure that children are not put in harm\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Achmad said she hoped all drivers were aware of what she said were responsibilities to look out for children and young people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis situation is just not on what has occurred here … And so I do expect better, I hope that we will continue to see better.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am mindful that thousands of children and young people around the country do use public transport every day to go to school and often without issue, so I really hope that we don\u2019t see more situations like this occurring and I think if drivers and others who provide services for children and young people get the clear message that they have a role to play to value and respect children, support them to be safe and well in our communities and getting to where they need … Then I think that\u2019s good for children and young people in our country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Achmad said she has separately been calling for heavily subsidised or free public transport so children can get to school during the fuel crisis.<\/p>\n
Kinetic told RNZ last week it was looking into what happened, but did not have anything further to add at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cYou know, she\u2019s an 11-year-old child, she\u2019s trying to get up to school on time,\u201d she told RNZ…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[66309,52056,118173,2511,4749,14903,111,43,139,5006,69,40182,312,199,61,6038],"class_list":["post-421348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-acceptable","tag-baker","tag-buses","tag-child","tag-childrens","tag-commissioner","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-not","tag-nz","tag-refusing","tag-says","tag-take","tag-to","tag-wilson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}