The Lagos State Government says it will start to conduct emission tests on all vehicles plying metropolitan routes next year. The Commissioner for Transportation, Kayode Opeifa, said this on Friday at a stakeholders’ meeting with truck/articulated vehicle owners in Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos.
He said the emission test would be part of the road worthiness test on vehicles, adding that government had engaged the services of experts to carry out the test. Opeifa said the state government wanted to ensure that vehicles that were not roadworthy were kept off the road. He said, “The government ought to have the database of all commercial vehicles operating in the state by September, 2014. “The need to begin emission tests on vehicles was arrived at during the last National Council on Transportation meeting in Lagos.”
The commissioner decried the rate at which articulated vehicles were getting involved in accidents, adding that the government was putting measures in place to reduce auto crashes in the state. “We have noticed some accidents involving articulated vehicles in the state and we feel that we need to speak with the regulators, owners and operators of those vehicles,” he said. The commissioner said the government’s initiative to reduce accidents on the state roads was the repackaging of the road worthiness certification, state parking policy, new taxi policy, truck routes planning and weigh bridge.
He added that drivers’ education, enlightenment and enforcement were key to preventing accidents on roads, while urging fleet managers to be alive to their responsibilities by ensuring that vehicles that were not road worthy were not allowed to operate.