The Petroleum Tanker Drivers, a branch of National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) has said that truck drivers queuing along the Apapa Oshodi Expressway to load fuel are doing so out of their own disobedience and their bid to curry patronage.
Speaking with Shipping Position Daily last week, a chieftain of the branch at the tank farms along the axis, Comrade Chris Iyasere said that it is a misnomer for stakeholders to keep on expecting tank farm owners to build parking spaces for tanker owners.
According to him, it is the duty and responsibility of truck owners to get a parking space for their trucks or to pay certain amount of money and park at designated truck parks across Lagos from where they would be called upon to come and load products.
“It is not the responsibility of depots to provide parking spaces for trucks; it is for the truck owners to get a place for their trucks or to pay and park at the parking space provided for them. But because the drivers want to stay very close to the location of the depot where they can easily get jobs”
“Some of the truck owners are shylocks, all they are interested in is money and for the sdriver to continue managing with their trucks, if the driver complains, they will drop him and employ another one who will be ready to work”
Iyasere said that the union now has a partnership with professional bodies including the Road Safety Corp who comes around to train tanker drivers regularly.
He said that each unit of the PTD has been sending ten drivers on steering each to the Zonal office of the branch where the training is being coordinated.
“It is always interactive, where the drivers are not clear they are taught, the standard of our drivers today is improved a lot, It is like having educated people in the system. At the end of the training they are issued certificates where they present whenever they are stopped on the highway” Chris said.
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