A boost is coming the way of road transport workers as the Institute of Road Transport Workers (IRTW) is set to bring the former economic empowerment aimed at turning their fortunes around.
The Institute hopes to achieve this laudable idea in partnership with Sterling Bank and other relevant government agencies with a pilot scheme for at least 200 road transport workers in the first phase of its Micro-Bus Empowerment Scheme.
The novel ideas include mandatory biometric registration and medical tests, including HIV/AIDS test, before prospective beneficiaries can have access to the facility.
According to the Chairman, Board of Directors of the Institute, Alhaji Abdul Rahman Adeyemi, the biometric registration is put in place to check criminal activities that are now resting with the use of commercial buses while medical tests are introduced to confirm and affirm fitness and qualification of the micro-buses prospective operators.
Besides, the Institute is also midwifing establishment of Micro Bus Owners and Operators Association of Nigeria in order to enhance operational activities around the scheme.
Pressed further, Adeyemi said, “The Micro-Bus Empowerment Scheme is a package of social-benefit incentives for registered trainees of the Institute of Road Transport Workers (IRTW). While the impartation of knowledge through preliminary and on-the-job training is the core mission, the Micro-Bus Empowerment Scheme, with all its multiple benefit packages, is only a tactical instrument of instigating voluntary submission to knowledge acquisition by road transport operators in Nigeria.
“Owing to the nature of the problem-focus of the Institute-the degeneration of the road transport sub sector into dumping ground for social wastes-a social-oriented problem, an equally society-based approach has been developed and adopted through a public-private partnership on the Scheme.”
Summing up, he described the scheme as “a transitional scheme by which masses of low-echelon road transporters, including motor-park hangers-on, hustlers, unemployed youth and the likes can acquire elevation into higher pedestals, specifically in the road transport business and generally, in all socioeconomic spheres of existence.”
He also hinted that beneficiaries are as well entitled to benefit from the Micro-Bus Empowerment Scheme Home Ownership Program, Health Insurance Programme and Life Assurance Programme.
With the biometrics, beneficiaries data are stored offline and online and each bus displays its owner’s and operator’s biometric identification number.
He said the Home Ownership Scheme, would be executed by the Institute in collaboration with the Lagos State Ministry of Housing, and under a contraption tagged Micro-Bus Rent-to Own Housing Scheme.
He mentioned hinterland routes as routes to be plied by the micro buses and it would be worked out in conjunction with all relevant he affirmed that not less than 200 micro buses would be disbursed for the pilot scheme, adding that about 50 are already in stock for qualified beneficiaries to pick up.
In a testimony, one of the qualified beneficiaries, Joseph Omache, who had been motor cycle rider for over 10 years at Yaba, described the scheme as a welcome and life changing one.
In a similar testimony, Akinbami Gilbert Oyekunle, a micro bus owner and operator at Jakande, Oke Afa area of Lagos, described the scheme as a unique and thorough innovation, in that while in operation, the owners and operators would not be subject to insult, assault, abuse and vehicle parts vandalization, phenomena that have now become a norm in well-known commercial vehicles parks.
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