Privatisation is only solution to railway sector — NARTO
Only privatisation of the Nigeria railways can guarantee the smooth development of the sector, the President, National Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), Alhaji Kassim Ibrahim Bataiya has said yesterday.
Speaking at the opening session of the NARTO’s National Executive Council meeting held in Abuja, Alhaji Bataiya blamed the moribund state of the railway sector on lack of funding and government bureaucracies.
“The purpose of the meeting is to resolve challenges facing road transport business in the country and chart a path for new opportunities for members.”, he said
He called on the government to speed up the privatisation of the railway sector adding that this would change the moribund state of railway transportation.
He said, “There is a concerted effort by the current administration to modernize and expand the Nigerian railways.
“What made the railway inefficient and moribund was partly its ownership structure. Being an agency of government, it depends largely on government subvention and is subjected to government control and bureaucracy.
“However, all these will soon change with privatisation of the sub-sector.
The Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Corps, Dr Boboye Oyeyemi, said that the agency had noticed a very high compliance rate among operators of articulated vehicles in the country.
He called on those that are yet to install the speed limit device on their vehicles to do so as the policy would savs the nation from avoidable menace of speed-induced crashes which account for most of the fatal cases recorded in the country.
Comparing the indices of first quarter of 2017 and corresponding period this year, he said there is a trending down in the number of road crashes.
For the first quarter of this year, he said 1,945 crashes were recorded against 2,240 at the same period in 2017.
Oyeyemi said a corresponding decrease was noticed in the number of people killed at 1,079 against 1,297 in 2017, while 6,664 injured victims was recorded against 7,506.