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MOMAN partners Lagos Commission, FRSC to check road accidents

By Thompson ABISOLA

The Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) said it was willing to partner with the Lagos State Safety Commission and other stakeholders to reduce accidents involving petrol tankers on Lagos roads.

Mr Godwin Jarikre, Head, Health Safety Environment Quality, MOMAN said, in Lagos on Wednesday, the partnership became imperative because about 95 per cent of incidents in the downstream industry involved trucks transporting petroleum products.

Jerikre said MOMAN considered road safety a priority hence it was collaborating with Lagos Safety Commission, a unit under the Lagos State ministry of environment, and the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC).

He said about 120 accidents that happened since 2014, including the recent one on Otedola Bridge, showed that 94 were rollover, 16 were collisions and 10 fire accidents.

“All these accidents would have been avoided if the right things were done and controls put in place were adhered to.

“At MOMAN the driver plays a major role in safety management and MOMAN commits to the training of drivers to improve their behavior and reaction while driving,’’ he said.

The official said the objective of the collaboration with the safety institutions was to provide drivers with full training both in terms of driving practice and safety of their vehicles.

He said continuous training would raise the awareness of drivers on journey management, vision of the road, reactions at the wheel, health, environment and security.

“MOMAN believes in self-assessment and developing standards among members to exchange information on best practices and exploit the gains made by members to improve MOMAN’s transportation system by reducing fatality to zero as daily operation continues.

“Annual technical evaluation of the equipment (tractor and the tank) are carried out in some of MOMAN members’ sites to ensure only trucks certified and approved for operations were used for loading operations.

“Technical specification of the vehicle is used to improve equipment quality which covers the entire fleet and has two main objectives of Improving safety of the equipment and transportation of the product,’’ Jerikre said in a statement.

He said MOMAN was engaging necessary stakeholders to define standards on the age of the tractors and tanks in service, and that the association was also encouraging its member to adopt new methods improve road safety.

Jerikre said tools such as OBC (Outboard Computers), cameras and route survey by GPS mapping were helpful in checking driver behavior, over speeding and blind spots identification.

“MOMAN believes information sharing among members on best practices will help improve safety and sustainability in the downstream business as there is no market share or competition on safety.

“MOMAN has set up a committee to self-regulate members on safe-to-load in our loading depots in a bid to enforce compliance with minimum safe-to-load check and self-regulation.

He said, apart from the training of drivers, NOMAN recently collaborated with FRSC to develop minimum safe-to-load grid for the downstream industry.

He said as a result of that, FRSC officials were stationed at MOMAN depots to ensure compliance with safe-to-load checks before trucks were loaded and allowed to leave the depots.

He said the association was also collaborating with the Federal Government Task Force Apapa on grid lock to ensure the access roads to Apapa were free at all times.

According to him, MOMAN directs its transporters/drivers to make use of holding bays/ truck parks and discourages parking of trucks along the road to improve safety, security and free flow of movement around the Apapa axis.

“MOMAN recently partnered with the Lagos State Safety Commission in the organisation of the first safety conference in the downstream industry.

“The association shared safety experiences and made major presentations during the two-day conference,’’ he said.

He said the information shared during the conference provided real knowledge for participants who would help raise safety consciousness in the downstream industry and the public at large.

“As a practical demonstration, the Safety Commission visited the Driver Training School at Ibadan belonging to one of MOMAN’s members.

“The objective was to collaborate closely with the Lagos State Safety Commission in assisting the commission on driver training and technical truck audit/vetting of articulated trucks that ply our roads.

“MOMAN is engaging regulators and all relevant stakeholders on how to move the petroleum downstream industry forward.

“MOMAN believes that a safe operation using the correct norms and standards will guarantee the long term sustainability of the industry,’’ Jerikre said.

 

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