The Lagos State Drivers Institute (LASDRI), has disclosed plans to train at least 80,000 drivers by the end of 2025 on personal safety and that of other road users.
LASDRI General Manager, Mrs. Afusat Tiamiyu, stated this during a phased special training session of the Association of Maritime Reefer Trucks Owners (AMRTO), drivers at the agency’s headquarters, LSTC Yard, Oshodi, Lagos.
Tiamiyu said: ‘From January till April ending, we have been able to train 24,000 drivers and we are targeting like 80,000 by the end of this year.
‘We were able to do 56,000 last year and we want to work on getting more. That informs why we don’t stay in our office, we move, and we do on-site trainings for drivers.
‘Some companies will say they don’t want to release their drivers for any reason, we say okay we can move our facilities, both human and material resources, to your doorsteps but the only thing is that we don’t issue our cards outside so as to avoid racketeering’.
The LASDRI boss, who personally engaged the AMRTO drivers in an educative and interactive session, harped on the fact that safe driving remained the main target of the training, while availing them the 3Cs important tips of driving, including caution, concentration and consideration.
Tiamiyu noted that the agency was in partnership with AMRTO to train their articulated truck drivers, 150 in total, on how to be professional.
‘For AMRTO, we are doing their trainings in phases, we have done two, this is the third phase. The first set of people were 21 in number; the second phase,19; and today, they are 15.
‘What they are taught is that driving is not a commoner’s affairs, you have to be trained. We believe with continuous orientation, training and retraining, we will be able to get the best out of them.
‘Majority of them are ignorant of what they are required to know but we are taking them back to classroom. I have told them, even the first two sets we have been able to train have good stories about the agency because we took our time to take them through the skills required to be defensive drivers.
‘After the training, we usually subject them to computer-based test, we don’t compromise our position after the training in Lagos State here.
‘We issue them Drivers Institute Re-certification Card, and we don’t issue the card without you taking a good grade, we issue it to them because of their performance’.
In a chat with newsmen on why the training was necessary, AMRTO Chairman Mr. Gbadeyan Babalola, said the association took the step in alignment with the state driving culture, adding that a specialised job required a specialised training.
‘The training was to align our drivers with the standard driving culture in Lagos State, given LASDRI’s spacious compound which can accommodate up to 500 drivers at a time, but because of the essence of our job, which is specialised, we break them into batches’, Babalola said.
