Some people have been quick to congratulate the Minister for Education, Evarist Bartolo, for fulfilling Labour’s electoral promise of providing free school transport to all schools.

I would like to remind these people that way back in 2014, then Opposition leader Simon Busuttil suggested, in his Budget speech reply, that the government should subsidise school transport. It is also worth remembering that the Prime Minister and his team of ‘yes men’ tried to ridicule Dr Busuttil when he put forward this proposal.  

Eventually last February we mortals were told that, as from this scholastic year, transport will be free for all schools and school children will be supervised.

The scholastic year is about to begin and the minister informed the public that there are some hurdles which still need to be overcome. It seems that there are not enough buses, not enough drivers and the supervision of children will not take place.

Although I still have my doubts I sincerely wish every success for this new system and that it will run smoothly as soon as possible for the benefit of us all.

A small piece of advice to some people: It would have been better to wait for a few weeks  to see how this scheme works out before congratulating the Minister for Education.