Artful Dodgers' bus pass racket
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PUPILS of schools in Newport, South Wales, have been operating a racket in concessionary bus passes selling duplicates to their friends.
This is estimated to have cost the town £200 a week in lost fares and now the Newport Borough Council is having to crack down on the junior Artful Dodgers in an effort to stop the losses.
Since September the council has had to issue over 600 duplicate passes after the originals have been "lost" or stolen or mislaid. The pupils will now have a photograph on their passes — and they have to pay 25p for the replacement pass.
The borough issues the passes to children who qualify for the Gwent County Council travel scheme using the corporation buses.
Newport transport manager Mr Frank Thorp told the council's public works committee that there was considerable abuse of the system. "It was hoped that the 25p charge would deter this abuse, but these measures have had no effect and already this school year we have issued 637 duplicate bus passes," he said.
"This is out of a total of 4,000 passes issued. There can be no doubt that a great deal of unauthorised free travel is being obtained by pupils who have acquired passes which are not theirs.
"With the changes in the mileage range recently introduced by Gwent Education Authority and the increase in school fares there will be an incentive for this to continue on an increased scale when fewer scholars are entitled to free travel."
But the council heard that when spot-checks were made on pupils using passes only two were found with the wrong passes.