There are certain areas of work in Oman which need to be regulated. Driving schools are one among them. There are no specific rules and regulations for them so far. This vocation or area of work is riddled with chaos which is prominently reflected in its method of training and prices. This leads to exploitation of those who want to learn driving. They have no way out except to remain patient. Those who train them sometime even make fun of their hardships of learning.
They go through this ordeal hoping that someday they will learn to drive properly and their life will be easier. But everything is at the mercy of the trainer. The objective is to get a driving licence and this forces many of them to remain silent.
Also, the learner knows that any problem with the trainer will leave him nowhere, but in the middle of a thorny road. In that case, they would have to begin from zero. Therefore, their wisdom says that keep silence in the pursuit of the goal.
This situation makes it important that there should be some rules and regulations for driving schools, where the dealings should be civilised and there should be a moral responsibility. There should be evaluation by any reputed and approved organisation which has full capacity to do evaluation and correct them if there are any faults. The authority should have the power to act if the required corrections are not made. This is the only way to protect trainees from exploitation. At the same time, this is how the trainer will get justified wages which commensurate with his efforts to bring quality in training process.
Once I was listening to a BBC radio programme. That particular episode was about driving schools. During the talk, it was told that there is a rule in Germany that those who learn driving are trained in first aid and how to help those injured during road accidents as some knowledge is required to get a driving licence. These things are in addition to traffic rules and regulations, awareness about safe driving and other related issues.
The crux of the matter is that we need to regulate the profession. Without any course in first aid or checking awareness level, the training of driving is not complete. But the situation today is adverse, you would not find any trainees who has no complaint about the training school or the tranier. They would always complain about high rate or huge advance money.
As far as the places where driving is taught, they lack even the least requirements. It is just the efforts of the coach which they make to train people to learn driving successfully. But the task is so herculean that it is as if the person is being trained to fly F-16. Both the coach and the trainee have to go through an ordeal for this.
When I am writing this, I do not generalise. There are trainers who do justice with their task with full honesty. They are making their personal reputation better that their dealings are fair, and they do their job reliably. Therefore, they are not blamed for any unfair practices. We feel that they should be compensated in a
better way.
In view of this situation, we feel that there is a dire need for giving any authority the responsibility to take care of this profession. There should be clear rules and regulations to run it. This is important to improve the quality of driving on roads, avoid road accidents, control the behaviour of people behind the wheels and make those who want to learn driving fully satisfied.
Ali Al Matani
ali.matani2@gmail.com
