The Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, Dr Boboye Oyeyemi has charged operatives of the Corps to eschew any form of compromise and carry out with all sense of responsibility and vigour the presidential directives on partial easing of lockdown effective from Monday, May 4, 2020.
According to Bisi Kazeem the Corps Public Education Officer, the Corps Marshal gave the charge to the operatives in order to keep them on high alert regarding the imperative of implementing to satisfaction the presidential directives to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
The FRSC boss made reference to the restriction on interstate travels, physical distancing amongst vehicle occupants, compulsory use of protective face masks and provision of temperature check devices, sanitizers and hand washing points in motor parks and terminals.
Oyeyemi ordered operatives to ensure that only vehicles conveying goods such as agro and petroleum products, medical supplies, relief and construction materials as well as essential services as directed by President Muhammadu Buhari were allowed to travel across states.
He warned that on no account should taxis conveying more than 3 passengers (driver and 2 persons) be allowed passage on any route.
In the same vein, he said, buses must comply with the directives of conveying passengers without exceeding 50 per cent of mandatory capacity (maximum of only 2 passengers on a row), while tricycles should carry only two passengers at a time, in line with the recommendations of Presidential Task Force on physical distancing amongst commuters.
This, he said, was as transport owners had been adequately communicated on maintaining environmental hygiene and provide temperature checks and hand watching/sanitising points at the parks/terminal.
He said commanding officers should, with immediate effect engage the transport unions on the need to adhere to the prescribed number of passengers they should carry.
The Corps Marshal also ordered the personnel to ensure that defaulters were brought to book through the instrumentalities of already existing mobile court operations constituted for the lockdown enforcement.
While speaking on the alarming rise of the pandemic in Nigeria, he called on the entire populace to intensify efforts on personal hygiene and desist from violating the social distancing order, as the partial ease of the lockdown did not in any way suggest that the scourge was over.
According to him, the partial lockdown period basically called for more vigilance and stringent compliance even more than ever before, so as to avoid making mockery of the progress already recorded so far by the PTF in the fight against the global health challenge.
