Deltans urged to embrace passengers insurance scheme beyond politics, sentiments

Deltans have been urged to embrace the state’s passenger’s insurance scheme beyond politics and sentiments, as the scheme is in the interest of the entire people of the state.

They are expected to comply with the scheme’s law for their own good and safety, considering that accident could happen anytime and may lead to loss of life even though no one prays for such.

Lawrence Egogo, the managing director, Calf-Time Global Concept Limited, the consultant in charge of the scheme, who spoke in an interview with a team of journalists in Asaba, Tuesday evening, disclosed that the call became imperative because some people were beginning to embrace the scheme while others were simply not ready to comply.

Egogo, an engineer, said that notwithstanding the awareness and sensiization programmes embarked upon in the major cities of the state since the relaunching of the scheme three months ago, there has been low compliance with the law in the major cities.

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We therefore tried to see how we could start the enforcement in Asaba, the state capital, he said, “We started our inaugural outing compliance check on Friday, July 23 and Monday, July 25, and impounded some vehicles, took the occupants to mobile court where they were fined by the magistrate, for contravening the law.”

He however bemoaned how his team was attacked by some ‘guys’ during the inaugural relaunching of the scheme but disclosed that the attackers later tendered apology letter, claiming that they were misinformed to attack the team so as not to allow them work.

He said that following the enforcement, it has been noticed that about 60 percent of transport operators in the state capital has started complying with the law while some don”t, even as some are really happy that the scheme is on board for their good and safety since compensations would be made.

He blamed transport operators for the low compliance recorded, as he observed that they didn’t try to implement the law by not informing their passengers on the need to pay N100.00 alongside their transport fare.

According to him, the law stipulates that each passenger in a trip should pay N100 as insurance cover and once everyone whose name appears on the manifest pays, all of them including the driver are covered.

Failure to comply attracts N1,000 fine or minimum one month imprisonment to the passenger while the driver pays N20,000 or six months in prison, he explained..

He said that overtime; most of the accidents that occurred in the state were not incidental, adding that the state government has no data – detailed information. He pointed out that in the scheme, there would be record of accident victims as well as compensation of upto N250,000 to the victims or to their relatives in case of death.

“There are a lot of people (accident victims) that nobody foots their bills but with this scheme, we’ve been able to put machinery in place in the state to ensure that in case of accident, there would be first hand personnel that would go and see how their bills would be taken care of.

“And if there is any case of emergency and we are informed, if possible, contact the nearest office within the state if that happened outside the state. The underwriter is a national insurance company that has presence in all the states of the federation. That’s why we feel that we are ready and prepared.

He said that even the transport companies also have monetary incentives at the end of the day, for partnering with the state government on the scheme.

Egogo said that due to nature of insurance company in the country whereby they don’t pay claims, the state government had made it clear that it was not going to be business as usual, he said, adding that the consultant would pay as much as N1 million for damage. So, it is a cheque and balance situation, he said.

It would be recalled that the Delta State House of Assembly in the year 2000 enacted a law to provide for compensation for would-be accident victims travelling within and outside the state, using governmnent approved motor parks.

The scheme is funded by governnent with a contribution of 100 naira per passenger captured in the approved passengers’ manifests in both private and public motor parks in the state and the state’s directorate of transport is charged with the implementation.

The former consultant firm handling the scheme was stopped by the state government having assessed it’s performance and this gave way for the current company to take over, having emerged the highest bidder.