THE National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) has urged the Federal Government to deploy software such as the union’s e-tracking platform to help tackle insecurity in the country.
Their Deputy General Secretary of NURTW, Mr Anthony Asogwa, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday, that the platform would enable the union detect threats to vehicle of members.
According to him, the union has concluded arrangements and can launch the platform before the end of the year or within the first quarter of 2022.”
Nigeria has the means to be able to engage any of the sophisticated software, which it can use in tracking the positions of criminals, because most of the times they are camped in the forest.”
Arrangements have already been concluded by the union to introduce what we call e-tracking. ”It is a platform we created and all our members will be logged into that platform, “If there is any threat or any issue, we will be able to detect it.”
If your friends or relations are traveling and are on the platform, you can monitor the vehicle’s movement at any point in time using the software.”
This is why I said currently there are enough means to track criminality. With the platform, any of our vehicles that have ssues on the road, we will be able to monitor it and then make calls to the nearest police station.
We are collaborating with the police on this. ”We hope to launch it between now and the first quarter of 2022,” he said.
NURTW also appealed to the Federal Government to increase its effort toward tackling insecurity on the roads to enable free movement of goods across the country.
Asogwa told NAN that “inasmuch as we know that the Federal Government is doing its best on the issue of security, it has to do more because the situation appears not to be getting better.”
About 90 per cent of transportation of goods and services in Nigeria are done by road.”
And because of insecurity on the roads, these goods and services cannot move freely to where they are needed and this impedes the economic growth of the country.”
This situation doesn’t seem to have improved as recently, even the train, which we considered the safest was attacked but God was merciful.”
So we want to plead with the Federal Government to do more. I believe if they do more, the situation will be under control.”
The secretary-general also decried the poor state of the Nigerian roads, saying that it enabled crime to thrive on the roads. ”
We have the issue of very bad condition of our roads. Some of these criminals stand at the bad portion of the road, knowing you will definitely slow down and when you do, they will attack.”
On his part, Mr Taiwo Yahaya, the Secretary, Jabi Motor Park of NURTW also decried the poor state of the roads.”
When you are travelling through Ogbaja-Omo-Kabba in Kogi and it rains, you are bound to spend roughly six to seven hours on that road because of its poor state.”
I know the government is really trying but they have to do something and fast concerning the roads,” he said.
