Institute sets to empower drivers with micro-bus in Lagos

The Institute of Road Transport Workers (IRTW) is set to empower 200 trainee driver graduates of the institution with micro-buses, in Lagos.

The Micro-Bus Scheme (MES), organised by IRTW in partnership with Sterling Bank and the Lagos State Government, according to the institute was a tactical instrument of instigating voluntary submission to knowledge acquisition by road transport operators in Nigeria, as the scheme is accompanied with preliminary and on-the-job training.

The project pilot is set to hold from April 2019, using Ikorodu, Alimosho and Ibeju,-Lekki as the pilot centre in Lagos.

At the biometric capturing exercise of beneficiaries in Lagos, the Chairman of the institute, Mr AbdulRahman Adeyemi, explained that owing to the degeneration of the road transport sub-sector, the institute developed a society-based approach and adopted same through Public-Private Partnership scheme, in which the Micro-Bus Scheme was a package of social-benefit incentives for registered trainees of  institute.

According to him, the IRTW was incorporated as a platform of human capacity in the development of the road transport sector through orientation, academic and professional training.

Speaking on the scheme, Mr Rasheed  Olokode, the Director of IRTW, said buses would be given to beneficiaries of the training at the rate of N1.2 million to be paid installmentally in 18 months at N2,500 per day.

Mr Olokode explained that the scheme, aside from empowering beneficiaries that cut across all strata, was a means of reaching out to the ‘unbanked’ and encouraging saving culture as well as aligning with the cashless policy of the Federal Government, as the entire process is cashless as Sterling Bank has fashioned the scheme in such a way that all payments are made through a designed debit card directly from the beneficiary’s account to the bank.

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He further noted that the scheme, which has received the nod from the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), is set to redefine the perceptions of transport workers as it intends to, through the training given to beneficiaries, orientate workers to be a major contributor to the economy as well as the development of the country.

He added that the institute’s target was to take lots of unemployed youths off the street, including motor park hangers-on, hustlers and those that the society viewed as being miscreants at motor parks.

Speaking to Tribune Online, a beneficiary who presently operates the commercial motorcycle, said he saw the scheme as an opportunity for him to elevate his status from a motorcyclist which he had been doing for the past 10 years. According to him, owning a microbus will, of course, increase his social status as well as his economic prowess.

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