By Favour Nnabugwu
ABUJA—Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners, NARTO, and Association of Petroleum Tanker Drivers, PTD, have asked the Federal Government to provide them with ready and conducive parking lot in Tafa town on Abuja-Kaduna Road before they would vacate the road.
ABUJA—Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners, NARTO, and Association of Petroleum Tanker Drivers, PTD, have asked the Federal Government to provide them with ready and conducive parking lot in Tafa town on Abuja-Kaduna Road before they would vacate the road.
National President of NARTO, Alhaji Kassim Bataiya, said until Federal Government provided the necessary facilities, such as flooring the ground with laterite, mounting of entry and exit gates, among others and make the 15-hectare space on the Abuja-Kaduna Road ready, tankers could not vacate the major road.
Bataiya, who briefed Minister of State for Works, Amb Bashir Yuguda, during an inspection tour of the Abuja-Kaduna Road by the Works Minister, yesterday, noted that it was difficult for drivers to move their tankers without provision for space to park.
He explained that 65 per cent of tankers in this country supply Abuja and Lagos alone, adding that the owners of those tankers were not based in Abuja, hence could not provide parking space for their tankers.
However, the Minister warned that government would not tolerate indiscriminate parking of tankers on the major roads, which he said leads to heap of refuse on both sides of the major road.
He said: “Government cannot ensure the safety and health of the people of this town and other road users if we have tankers parked indiscriminately on the expressway.
“The problem of Tafa town is not only the parking of tankers, but the dumping of refuse, which is not acceptable to government for safety and the health of the road users.”
SOURCE: Vanguard Newspaper, 11 May 2012. http://www.vanguardngr.com/
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