The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola has bemoaned the challenge of overloaded trucks by drivers who ply bad roads in the country.
While decrying the trend by truck drivers and heavy-duty vehicle operators, Fashola said such actions were at the expense of other road users and appealed to the government and citizens to put an end to it.
He made the call during an appearance before the House of Representatives Committee on Works over the 2022 budget proposal defence.
Fashola said many big businessmen carry out their activities at the expense of the common assets of Nigerians.
He said, ‘Some people are doing business at the expense of everybody. So what they should carry, 60-70 tonnes in three trucks, they are cheating by loading onto one truck and they are destroying our common asset. Let people just do the proper thing; we sort the approval of Mr. President after we subscribed to the ECOWAS treaty to start implanting. The Minister said he had approved that enforcement be done from the largest loading points which are mostly the ports and NNPC depots.’
‘In some of the ports, we discovered that some of the private sectors who are operating the ports have a significant number of their weighing instruments calibrated so we have been working to remedy that.’
‘We have support from the ports but the operators in the ports are the problem. We also have support from the NNPC but what the NNPC has reported at follow up meetings as a problem to major implementation is that, when the trucks load 30,000 litres, they then go outside of the depot and decant into one truck.’
The Federal Government of Nigeria has slammed some policies against Truck drivers some of which include driving at Night.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
