TheNewsGuru

Tag: road

  • Lagos arrests 30 cart pushers for dumping refuse on road medians

    …Vows to prosecute saboteurs of New Waste Management Policy

    The Lagos State Government on Monday arrested 30 cart pushers for dumping refuse indiscriminately on road medians in some areas of the State in the middle of the night.

    Chairman of the State’s Task Force on Environmental and Other Special Offences (Enforcement Unit), SP Olayinka Egbeyemi who spoke to journalists, said the arrest was in line with the recent ban on the activities of cart pushers and wheelbarrow operators by the State Government.

    Egbeyemi, who affirmed that the activities of cart pushers in the State are illegal, said investigations found them culpable in dumping refuse on the roadside especially at night thereby sabotaging efforts by the Government to keep the State clean.

    He said the Government is poised to go all out to prosecute any persons found to be working against the new waste management policy encapsulated in the Cleaner Lagos Initiative (CLI), saying the programme is designed to revolutionalise waste administration in line with global best practices when fully operational.

    “There are reports that refuse are littering the Lekki, Victoria Island, Ajah and other parts of the State and investigations reveal that it is the handiwork of unscrupulous elements within Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) and their outside sponsors who are not comfortable with the new arrangement for the management of waste in the State and are hell-bent on sabotaging government effort and frustrating them from carrying it out.

    “The State Government has vowed to go all out against the saboteurs and after their sponsors and punish them in line with the laws of the State.

    “We also need to let Lagosians know that it is illegal to use cart pushers to evacuate refuse and they should stop encouraging it. There are PSP vehicles that come around to pack refuse and they are the ones they should patronise and not these cart pushers.

    “We want to notify all these cart pushers that their activities are illegal in Lagos. Lagos is a megacity and we have all it takes to collect refuse. So, the issue of going to the streets and collecting refuse and then dump same on the road is an act of sabotage to the government,” he said.

    Egbeyemi said the suspects arrested would soon be charged to court for prosecution, just as he assured that Government would leave no stone unturned in keeping the State safe and clean.

    Besides, the Task Force Chairman said that the enforcement would continue across the State until the activities of cart pushers and other unscrupulous elements found to be frustrating government’s efforts are completely brought to a halt.

    “For the past two to three weeks, we have been noticing refuse on the roads and investigations have revealed that part of those carrying out such act and sabotaging government efforts are these cart pushers and probably there might be some people behind them,” Egbeyemi said.

  • Okorocha builds giant statue of Zuma, names newly commissioned road in Imo after him

    Imo state governor Rochas Okorocha yesterday unveiled a giant statue of South Africa president Jacob Zuma in Owerri Imo state.

    Zuma who is on a two-day visit to Owerri, Imo State, South East Nigeria was also conferred a traditional chieftaincy title by the state governor – a road was named after him.

    Okorocha also conferred on President Zuma, the Imo Merit Award, the highest award in the State conferred on distinguished personalities who have made a difference in the development of their communities and to humanity.

    This has triggered fierce reactions from Imo state indigenes, Nigerians who took to social media to vent their disappointment and anger.

    The visit of President Zuma, according to Imo State government, is for the signing of an MoU between Rochas Foundation with the Zuma Foundation.

    Nigerians react:

  • Nigeria records 15 deaths daily in road accidents between January and June – NBS

    No fewer than 2, 673 people died in road accidents in Nigeria between January and June, according to National Bureau of Statistics, NBS.

    This implies an average of 15 people died each day in the first six months of 2017 in road accidents across the country.

    The NBS Road Transport Data for first and second quarters of the year posted on its website on Tuesday shows that 1, 466 died in the first quarter and 1, 207 died in the second quarter.

    The data, however, indicated that the number of deaths through road accidents was gradually reducing.

    The first quarter data reflected that 2,556 road accidents occurred during the period while the second quarter data reflected that 2,503 occurred in the period.

    The report stated that speed violation was identified as the major cause of accidents with the second quarter recording 44.44 per cent of such cases.

    It stated that loss of control accounted for 12.92 per cent of accidents, while dangerous driving accounted for 8.06 per cent of road crashes in the second quarter.

    The Bureau further stated that 8,270 people were injured in the accidents and that 7,805 of the 8,270 injured persons were adults, representing 94 per cent of the figure.

    The report adds that 465 or six 6 per cent of the injured were children.

    The report stated that the Nigerian capital, Abuja, recorded the highest number of road accidents in the second quarter, followed by Kaduna and Niger states, while Borno and Bayelsa states recorded the lowest number of accidents.

    The bureau estimated the number of vehicles in the country in the second quarter to be 11.51 million for the country’s population of 193.40 million at the end of 2016.

    According to the bureau, a total of 218,060 national drivers’ licences were produced in the second quarter.

    It stated that Lagos State and Abuja produced the highest number of licences while Zamfara and Kebbi states produced the lowest numbers.

  • Los Angeles to rename road after Obama

    Los Angeles to rename road after Obama

    Rodeo Road in Los Angeles, will soon be named as Barack Obama Boulevard.

    The president of the Los Angeles City Council said he has introduced a motion to rename the street in the city after the former US President.

    Councilman Herb J. Wesson Jr. announced the initiative on his twitter account, saying that he wanted to change the name of a street in his district from “Rodeo Road” to “Obama Boulevard.”

    “Nine years ago I had the honour of introducing then Senator Obama at his first campaign rally held at Rancho Cienega Park on Rodeo Road,” Wesson tweeted.

    “Our council district is home to Washington,” he wrote.

    Wesson is the first African-American to hold the position of Los Angeles City Council president.

    “Rodeo Road,” roughly 5 km long, is the place where then Senator Obama held his first Los Angeles campaign rally after announcing his candidacy for president in 2007.

    Los Angeles already has a number of streets named after former presidents, including Washington Boulevard, Adams Boulevard and Jefferson Boulevard.

    It’s not the first plan to honour Obama in the second largest city of the United States.

    The California State Senate last month backed a plan to rename a stretch of the 134 Freeway running through the LA northern suburb after Obama, who attended Occidental College in Eagle Rock area nearby in 1979

     

    NAN

  • Road Funding: Dogara proposes Infrastructure Bond as solution to end debts

    Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara, has proposed an Infrastructure Bond for funding road projects in the country.

    Speaking when he received the report of the Technical Committee for the Review of the Roads’ Funds Bills in his office, Dogara noted that it is very important to ensure that these debts that have led to countless loss of jobs for Nigerians are settled for good.

    “There is this existing humongous debts owed firms constructing roads. How do we exit from these debts so that the contractors and their workers can go back to work?”, Dogara asked.

    He added, “I think we have to look inwards. I think we should think about floating an Infrastructure bond that will capture road infrastructure. We should just start on a new slate.”

    The speaker, while stressing that countries with good road network develop at a faster pace than those that don’t, also noted that, “Nigeria’s road funding has been strictly through fiscal allocation since 1970; and whereas, the recommended expenditure plan for road is 3.0 per cent of the annual gross domestic product (GDP), we currently spend an infinitesimal 0.5 to 0.1 percent GDP.

    “The burden of these long years of inaction on our road is high because for every N1 we fail to spend on road infrastructure, the country loses N5 in return. The loss in the man-hours per annum is put at 10 billion hours or N1.0 trillion. These are apart from cost of impairment, trauma, and loss of lives resulting from road crashes.”

    The speaker also decried the high toll of inadequate and poor road infrastructure in Nigeria.

    Giving assurance on the commitment of the House of Representatives and the National Assembly to revamp the nation’s existing road networks and building of new ones through the Road Fund Bill, to provide alternative, adequate and sustainable source of funding; Dogara said the country could not talk about economic diversification or joining the industrialised world, without a sound road network.

    “Nigeria needs at least 300, 000km of sound road network to actualise the Vision 2020. The country’s road network stands at a meagerly 194, 200km as at April 2016, with federal roads accounting for 34, 120km, while the local government account for 129, 580km and of that number, only 9,212km are rated as good, while 13,307km are rated fair and and 11,601km are rated bad.

    “If we must meet the self appointed benchmark of becoming one of the 20 largest economies by 2020 or in the near future, we must work to increase total road network from 194,200 we have today, to at least, 300, 000km by 2020. It means that we have to provide a minimum of 21, 000 km per annum.

    “In fact, we need to make a planned and sustained N250 billion expenditure on the roads, in addition to N140 billion maintenance expenditure for the next 6 to 7 years. And we cannot do all these with government funding alone, hence the import of the Roads Fund Law”, he added.

    TheNewsGuru.com reports that the Speaker, however, commended the House Committee on Works and members of the Technical Committee for a job well done and promised immediate action on the recommendations.

    Speaking earlier, the Chairman of the 27-man technical committee, Engr Chris Okoye, said the committee researched road development plans across many continents to come up with a workable plan for the Nigerian environment.

    He said the committee recommended toll fees, fuel levy, axle load control charges, among others, as reliable sources of funding for road development and maintenance.