Bhubaneswar: Sahu Sahu, 35, has bought a new school van six months before Pandemic Covid-19 struck in 2020.
With great difficulty, he managed to pay emis for four months.
However, after the closing of the school, he decided to sell his van with the price of fading and started working at a grocery store to make a living.
Prasant Balis, 46, who runs the Van Busine school in the Patia area with a fleet of 13 large and small vehicles, was forced to close the 15-year trading after the school was closed due to a pandemic in 2020.
Vans began to collect dust and all the drives took another job.
Balismal, who started another business in Interim, now plans to run two vans to transport children as a school in the state reopened.
Like Sahu and Balis, hundreds of taxi / van or automatic rickshaw drivers who used to make a living by transporting children to be unemployed or changed jobs in the past two years.
With offline classes for students from I to VII continuing from February 14, many hope to restart their old work.
“I used to get Rs 12,000 a month in the pre-covid period but the pandemic destroyed my life.
All my savings run out when my income fell in a pandemic.
Now schools are reopened but I’m not sure if I can arrange money to rent vans even to start Return my work, “said Sahu.Many driver engaged to school to run the bus, it also became a unemployed when a closed educational institution, and some have gone to their village.
“Because fear of Covid, many parents might not prefer school buses.
I will wait for two months before making a decision to return,” Mahendra Mallik said, taxi driver.