By Albert Akota
The Federal Government has said that the resumption date for Abuja, Kaduna railway operation is not certain for now due to the new method introduced before buying tickets
The Minister of Transportation, Muazu Sambo who disclosed this yesterday at Rigasa station in Kaduna state during inspection of Abuja, Kaduna railway before operation, said that the corridor willi be monitor on daily basis and improve on whatever or wherever they find some snacks.
“I will tell you that whatever is humanly possible to put to secure the lives of the users of this service have been put in place and we will continue to upgrade.
“The issue of whether the train will start tomorrow or not, we have not said the train services will start tomorrow. I want to be very categorical about that. Now, we have introduced a new system before you buy a ticket,” he said.
According to him, purchases of a ticket requires passager to provide a phone number and a national identification number in order to profile because that is the beginning of the security checks.
“So, at any point in time when a train moves from one station to another we know who and who are on board, If you don’t have an NIN you are not going to board our train, It is as simple as that. if you are a minor, an adults will pay for you and will register for you and an adult can only register for not more than four minors.
“Now, we want to give sufficient time for the Nigerian public to listen to these and assimilate this new system? Because if we start tomorrow, a lot of people will be disgruntled, Why didn’t they tell? us that this is the new way of doing it? Why didn’t they give us adequate time to do it? So we want to give you adequate time. Definitely between three, four, five days, certainly not more than a week,” He reaffirmed.
Sambo added that, his travelled from Idu to Rigasa in order to assess the state of readiness of train services between Abuja and Kaduna, a number of measures have been put in place in order to ensure that life and property will be secured when we resume services and I am satisfied with what I have seen.
“Of course, there are one or two three areas that need to be addressed. We’re going to address them immediately,” he said.
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