From Yakubu Busari,Jos
Governor Mutfwang
The Jos University Teaching Hospital,(JUTH), host community of Jos North Local Government Council of Plateau State have made a passionate appeal to the Plateau State government, Plateau Express Service and Jos Metropolitan Development Board, JMDB,to consider their plight and allow the Bus and Taxi drivers to operate in front of the temporary site of the Old JUTH for easy mean of transportation patients.
Spokesperson of the host communities , Comrade Azi Peter Aware at the Old JUTH Temporary site appealed to the authority to kindly take into consideration the challenges passengers plying to the new JUTH are going through with harsh economic realities .
He said that since passengers to the new and old JUTH include the sick ones, the aged and students any attempt to move them in front of the Old JUTH might affect the health condition of these passengers .
Azi explained further that the decision to address journalists alongside the union leaders from the bus drivers and the commercial vehicle owners as the host Communities of JUTH, Lamigo and Fukoh was taken to sensitise relevant stakeholders.
He said that of recent government introduced laudable programme towards decongestion of the city capital, especially the terminus market and the Communities leaders are commendable, saying that “this is a giant strike in an effort to ensure that there is sanity in the city to improve the transportation system which is now subsidize especially in this hardship now that fuel is very costly and scarce and the transportation of the patients to assess medical attention is so dire.
“They have an organized task force and what happened here was that during the time government handed over the structure for orthopedic hospital, the taxi driver and bus drivers were operating here in front of the Old JUTH fence but since government wanted to use the facility they were now moved right inside the Main Market by which time government again reversed the order to reallocate them to another space to make way for the introduction of metro buses.”
According to him,” when you carefully look at the caliber of passengers that they packed into JUTH Community to Lamigo most of them are sick people and aged parents, so if there is no befitting parking space in front of Old JUTH it would be very difficult for the drivers to operate smoothly.
“We are appealing to government that since we allowed the drivers to operate here in the past and now they are back here temporarily, we beg the appropriate authority to consider their plight and that of patients traveling to permanent site of JUTH to assess medical attention .
” These are people that are well organized and as leaders of host Communities we won’t allow unruly behavior. The community promised to continue to dialogue with the government and monitor the affairs of the commuters to avoid unnecessary encroaching of members coming to the main road .
” We are begging that they should be allowed to temporarily operate here because there’s no accessible road network to the new park and the worse aspect of the challenges is their safety owning to insecurity. We are talking about the lives and properties of bus drivers, taxi drivers knowing the state flashpoints,”he explained.
“We appreciate the members of the committee and officials of government for making frantic effort to sanitize the process to run seamlessly because the process was done without any rancour so our brothers operating as commercial bus drivers need befitting parking space.”
