The first day of the government's bus fare assistance program has been a daunting task for school heads and management around the country in trying to distribute the fares to the students and to cash their cheques.

Fijivillage has today contacted a number of schools around the country and they all said while they welcome the governments initiative there has to be a serious and quick need to relook at ways of distributing the money.

Dilkusha Girls School head teacher Viniana Sekinoco who said while she understands that this is a temporary measure of distributing the money, with a school roll of 850 students out of which 700 travel to school by bus on a daily basis, distributing the money is a time consuming task.

Sekinoco said they had received their cheque of $4,000 yesterday and had to take time during school hours along with two other teachers to cash the cheque, to be ready for distribution.

She said that she sympathizes with other school heads that have to travel long distances to cash their cheque.

She added this has eaten into their teaching time, and keeping large sums of money at the school has also brought unnecessary worry for them.

Meanwhile, one of Suva's biggest primary schools will be putting together a proposal to government and stakeholders in the hope of finding an easier way to distribute student's fares by the end of the week.

Veiuto Primary School Head Teacher Master Apisalome Colanailagovesi said they have a school roll of 900 students out of which roughly over 450 students qualify for the program and today they will be giving out the fares to students, which he said will be a major task.

Colanailagovesi said they received their cheque of $4,000 today, out of which they now have to work out the individual fares depending on where the student is travelling from, adding that they are fortunate to have a full time administrator to work out the fares, however, the case may not be the same in other schools, and he knows that some teachers will find it difficult to cope.

Almost 80,000 students around the country who travel by bus to school received their fares under the government's bus fare assistance program which begun this morning.

Permanent Secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office Lt. Colonel Pio Tikoduauda said they held their first meeting today with relevant stakeholders and are trying to find solutions as soon as possible.