Leading the charge on the push for seat belts for the bus servicing Central Tilba Public School is Amy-lee Negus, who is refusing to let her 5-year-old daughter Molly on the bus until it is replaced with a seat-belt equipped bus.

Similarly Ray Stevens won’t let her 7-year-old Logan on the bus until it has seat belts.

“It’s scary,” Ms Negus said. “The bus goes on the highway and that’s just too scary for me to think that something could happen. You don’t want one kid to get hurt to make something happen.”

The mums say the current Tilba school bus is a smaller vehicle and so was more dangerous than a larger bus, and it also travelled narrow, dangerous unpaved roads at the back of Tilba.

Narooma area school bus operator Graham Symons said he would like all his buses to have seat belts but it was the Transport Department that dictated which buses were upgraded.

Mr Symons said the department had been good to work with and most of the buses in the Narooma area already had seat belts fitted.

Ms Negus has been in correspondence with Bega MP Andrew Constance about the need for seat belts on the Tilba school bus, and so she was very pleased to hear of the extra funding in the budget.

The mums calls for seat belts comes just as it was announced this week that all regional school buses will have seat belts four years ahead of schedule, thanks to a $29 million school bus seatbelt blitz in the NSW budget.

Member for Bega Andrew Constance said 171 buses across the Far South Coast region will now have seatbelts sooner because of this commitment.

Mr Constance said the plan to fast track the installation of seatbelts will ensure the safety of regional public transport.

“We are fast tracking seatbelts on regional school buses, making sure all regional students can travel on buses with seatbelts by December 2019 – four years ahead of schedule,” Mr Constance said.

“We have a large section of unsealed roads in each shire and the majority of our services have our kids travelling in 100km/h zones.

“This is something our communities have been crying out for and I’m committed to making sure kids across our region can travel to school safely.”

“Parents need to feel assured their children are safe when they send them off on the bus of a morning, I am confident this fantastic announcement will instil that confidence.”

Funding in the 2017-18 NSW budget means all buses travelling on dedicated regional school routes will have seatbelts by December 2019, ahead of the current schedule of 2023, he said.

All 2,800 rural and regional buses will have seatbelts by December 2021 with the replacement of 415 buses and retrofitting 1,937 existing buses, on top of the 515 buses that have already been replaced.