Borno – Borno State governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum, has inaugurated 610 taxis, tricycles and buses to boost urban mass transportation in Maiduguri and parts of Jere and Konduga Local Government.
The vehicles which were distributed to 2,200 drivers who are mostly youths include 100 Toyota LE cars for city taxis, 500 tricycles popularly known as ‘Keke NAPEP’ and 10 Ashok Leyland buses each with capacity for 41 passengers.
Ten of the buses were allocated to the Borno Express Transport Corporation for intracity services, the 500 tricycles were allocated to 2, 000 operators.
Each of the tricycles was to a group of four unemployed persons.
The 100 taxis were also allocated to 200 persons with each to be manned by two persons.
Modalities for the distribution were arrived at after Governor Zulum held meetings with leaders of different associations of Keke NAPEP operators who informed the governor that some of their members formed groups to own tricycles and they have their ways of jointly managing them and sharing profits.
Speaking earlier, the state Commissioner for Transport, Dr. Abubakar Tijjani, assured the governor of effective and efficient supervision to ensure functional deployment to routes in line with the governor’s goal of increasing access to mass transport in the metropolis.
On security integrated into the tricycles and taxis, Managing Director and Chief Executive of Bexil Computers & Communications, Yusuf
Hayatuddeen, said each of the 500 tricycles has digital stickers from which passengers can use smart phones to access essential data of all operators.
He also explained that with the stickers, movements of the tricycles will be tracked to discourage route overlapping by operators.
Aside the 2,200 persons allocated the tricycles and taxis, Governor Zulum also distributed N50 million to additional 1,000 trycle operators.
Each of them will receive N50,000 as social support.
They were existing trycle operators who did not benefit from the newly introduced mass transit scheme.
With this, the total beneficiaries comes to 3,200. ( vitalnews)
