The leadership of the Kaduna State chapter of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) have lamented that travellers in the state have reduced by over 50 per cent as the Yuletide approaches.
The state NUTRW Secretary, Malam Bature Suleiman, made this disclosure on Friday in an interview monitored by Africa Today News, New York.
Suleiman said the development was due to the high cost of transportation fare which was occasioned by the increment of fuel pump price.
‘People no longer travel but only prefer to send messages to their loved ones. Sadly, if you go to our motor parks now, you will see a lot of vehicles waiting without passengers.
‘People don’t have money to travel until it becomes necessary; they prefer to waybill messages,’ Suleiman noted.
He said commercial motorists were running at a loss due to the poor economic situation of the country, adding, ‘Apart from the increase of fuel price, we have a lot of bad roads, and a lot of policies taken on the transportation sector are not favourable.’
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The official lamented alleged multiple taxes which members of the union had been paying, describing the situation as very bad.
He said, ‘There are lots of revenues attached to transportation as the government now seems to have its focus on the sector. Currently, there is an increment so much that what the driver would get at the end of the day is nothing to write home about. Drivers would just be doing the work without any gain in it.’
In another report, inflation surged to 28.20 per cent in November from 27.33 per cent in October, underscoring a worsening cost of living crisis in the country.
In its new ‘Consumer Price Index: November 2023’ released on Friday, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that headline inflation surged by 0.87 percentage points in November to a new record high in almost two decades.