No fewer than 130 rickety vehicles were impounded for allegedly operating in the guise of commercial transport business, to perpetrate crime in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
DRTS director, Abdulateef Bello alleged that most of the rickety vehicle operators used them for one-chance and other related crimes in the nation’s capital.
Bello spoke to reporters during the inspection of the impounded vehicles kept at various DRTS offices, which started from the DRTS Headquarters in Mabushi through Bannex, Gwarinpa, Area 1 and Wuye command offices respectively.
He explained that the rationale behind the raid was to ensure that the Directorate operatives return the city back to sanity, remove all traces of insecurity, and then, ensure seamless traffic flow in the capital city.
Bello said: “For the last two weeks, we activated evening raids to ensure the operations of all substandard vehicles plying the city in the guise of commercial business, whereas many of them are running the city to perpetrate crime.
“This is an assignment that we have taken upon us in line with the vision of the current administration to guarantee zero tolerance to insecurity in the FCT.
“This, we will continue to do. We will not rest on our oars until we ensure that all substandard (rickety) vehicles that are being used for criminality are removed from the city”.
According to him, there is a substantial reduction in the rate of one-chance criminal activities in the city, due to what the Directorate and other sister agencies have been doing in the last one month, to ensure that there are no vehicular businesses on the road corridors.
He said: “We have been pushing them back to the existing taxi ranks and then those who still want to engage vehicles outside the taxi ranks may be doing so at their own risk.
“We have substantially reduced the level of criminality that is associated with once because what we started doing in the last one month is to ensure that there are no businesses on the road corridors.
“For individuals arrested based on crime, we hand them over to the police and the police will definitely prosecute them.
“As for the vehicles, definitely we will have to subject the vehicle to all standard verification for registration, roadworthiness, and all that. So, I think for us, our role is complementary. We just make sure that we support the right agencies to do their job”.
On what to do with the impounded vehicles, the DRTS boss said: “Some of the vehicles that are here, some of them will be made to face the mobile court. The mobile court will decide the kind of penalty that will be given to them.
“But we have seen that there are some that definitely will not go back to the road. We are going to invite the owner, we will ask them to pick whatever is valuable in the vehicle, and the vehicle will be crushed.”
