VietNamNet Bridge – The HCM City Public Transport Management Centre has launched a pilot programme to use fingerprint scans on school buses to enable schools to better manage school ridership.

An employee with the HCM City Public Transport Management Centre collects fingerprints of students at Nguyen Binh Khiem primary school in District 1. A pilot programme to allow fingerprint scans on school buses is being implemented at the school.—Photo thanhnien.vn

The Nguyen Binh Khiem primary school in District 1 will initially implement the programme with 37 students on four 16-seat buses operated by the Youth Volunteers Public Services single-member limited liability company.

Lam Hong Lam Thuy, the school principal, said, because of privacy concerns, she must receive parents’ approval before the centre collects students’ fingerprints.

Tran Chi Trung, head of the centre, said fingerprint scans were widely used in businesses, mainly for employee attendance checks, but this was the first time the technology had been applied in transport in the city.

The use of fingerprint scans makes it easier for the school to check attendance by bus than by the traditional way when students are counted when they hop off and on the bus.

The city has around 2,000 schools with a total of 2 million students. Trung hopes that with this programme the number of students going to school by bus will increase.

A principal of one primary school told Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper one of the biggest concerns is privacy because the students’ name, date of birth and fingerprints are collected and stored in the centre’s system.

The principal, whose name was not revealed, said schools and parents would accept the programme only if the centre and technology company committed to data security and did not use the data for other purposes.

Trung said after assessing the impact of the programme, the centre would expand it to all schools in the city.

Software to help parents know the time their children are getting on and off the bus would be introduced soon, he added.

Source: VNS