NURTW supports Lagos Traffic Law

 

LAGOS got yesterday a major support for its new traffic law. The National Union of Road Transport Workers pledged to   cooperate with the government to ensure full implementation of the law, which has been controversial. It punishes eating and telephone calls while driving, among other penalties.

The president of the union, Alhaji Najeen Usman Yasin, who made the pledge at Lagos House, Ikeja, while on a visit to Governor,  Babatunde Fashola, said members of the union would remain law abiding. 

Yasin, who led other top officials of the national body of the union on the visit, noted that the Fashola administration had, through its people-orientated policies, especially in the transport sector, enabled the union to prosper by establishing a mass transit operation. 

He told the Governor: “Implementation of the BRT scheme by the union has, apart from assisting our union to acquire vehicles for mass transit operations, also gone a long way towards boosting public transport and accessibility to safe and secure road transportation in the State.”  

 The President praised the Ministry of Transport , LAGBUS and the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) for working assiduously to fashion out modes of operation of the mass transit buses through the objective selection of routes and locations so as to ensure ease of administration, deployment, maintenance and convenience of prospective passengers. 

According to him, because of the enabling environment created by the Fashola administration, the union was able to immediately deploy to Lagos some of the buses allocated to it early this year by the Federal Government to cushion the effect of the withdrawal of oil subsidy. The decision was also informed by the fact that Lagos is the economic capital of Nigeria, he said. 

Replying, Fashola urged the union members to be champions of the change that the state is bringing about through the Traffic law, because, according to him, “you are the greatest beneficiaries”. 

The only way to succeed with the new law is for the members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers to play within the rules as provided in the law and not outside it,” Fashola said. 

Source: The Nation