BEIJING / WUHAN - The State Council's Legislative Affairs Office is asking government ministries for advice on a draft safety regulation to govern the use of school buses.

The request comes after 19 preschoolers and two adults died on an overcrowded bus on Nov 16.

The other 43 people on the bus, which only had nine seats, were injured.

In response, Premier Wen Jiabao called on Sunday for a bus-safety regulation to be issued within a month.

Sources told China Daily on Tuesday that the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Security are among the agencies that are making suggestions about the new regulation.

Overloaded school buses are common in China, especially in the countryside. Police throughout the country have stopped 8,316 overloaded school buses so far this year, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Ministry of Public Security's traffic management bureau.

During the same period, the police also found 3,765 illegal school buses and 2,606 unqualified school-bus drivers, according to ministry figures.

Recent years have seen a steady decline in the number of students who have died in traffic accidents.

Even so, accidents involving school buses killed more than 100 students in Beijing, in Shanxi, Gansu and Liaoning provinces and in other places this year, Li Zhe, a senior official with the traffic management bureau, told China National Radio on Tuesday.

He said traffic police should not simply impose fines on overloaded school buses and then let them move on, as some media outlets have said they do. They should instead take such vehicles off the road.

Many say schools do not have enough money to use standard school buses. In response to such observations, Premier Wen said on Sunday that the central and local governments will help pay for those costs.

Zhou Hongyu, an education professor with the Wuhan-based Central China Normal University and a deputy to the National People's Congress, went to the top legislature in 2010 and submitted a proposal to promote school-bus safety.

On Tuesday, Zhou said the Ministry of Education has replied to his suggestions, saying they are good but that there is not enough money to pay for them.

The ministry's reply said the government should spend about 300 billion yuan ($47 billion) on school buses to be used at preschools and other schools where attendance is compulsory.

He said the cost of operating and maintaining those vehicles will be about 150 billion yuan.

Although those costs have proved unaffordable, Zhou said Premier Wen's directive has given him hope.