£1.6m taxi farefor WELB kids
THE people of Northern Ireland paid out over one-and-a-half million pounds in taxi fares in order to take pupils to schools in the Western Education and Library Board (WELB) during the 2010/11 academic year.
Education Minister John O’Dowd revealed the cumulative taxi fare was £1,630,000 during that year, the last for which figures were available.
During the same year the people forked out £14,023,000 on school buses. This figure includes all buses provided by Translink, Education and Library Boards and private operators.
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Hide AdIn July the Sentinel revealed the people of Northern Ireland paid out £6.8m in taxi fares to take pupils to schools in WELB over the past five years.
In 2011 the paper reported how taxi firms in the WELB area were getting £1.60 a mile ferrying children with special needs to school when community transport could do the same job for a fraction of the cost.